Mliswa says Mugabe lied to Parliament

So, even as Members of Parliament, I am sad to say that while some of us are fortunate enough to have a bit more resources than others, but the aspect of resources must not be the one that puts a person into power.  It must be the policies that the Government of the day has.  So, in terms of the CDF, it is in a mess.  We have not seen that.  This is the final session.  They have promised people what they will do because of the blue print document which is there, the manifesto and the policies which were there.  They now cannot go back to the people because the people are saying they are lying.  With all this publicity people think we were given the CDF.  We have not been given the CDF.  So, I would have liked the President to ensure that Members of Parliament are equally capacitated because Members of Parliament who are capacitated are able to do more for the country and so forth.

I am going through the legislative agenda.  I see that out of the 206 pieces of legislation identified as requiring alignment to the Constitution, only 30 remain outstanding.  That is misleading, totally misleading.  We have got 455 that need to be aligned.  Out of the 455, we have not even done 50.  This is serious. We have not done 50, so what are we doing?  So, I do not know who misinformed the President.  It was well worded that out of the 206 pieces of legislation identified, what about the 455?  There are some which certainly were supposed to come which are of fundamental importance.

You have got the provincial governments which must be there.  It is in the Constitution.  Whether we like it or not, the Constitution says that there must be provincial councils in place.  It is not there.  You talk about not having resources, so why in the first place did we even have a Constitution with that when we do not have resources.  So to me, it shows that we have failed.  We have failed the people of Zimbabwe by not having to deliver from a constitutional point of view because all of us here have the mandate to respect the Constitution and to ensure that the Constitution moves on.  We are seen wanting.

Elections were held, people used resources for them to be there and they are still waiting for the Constitution to work.  That is not happening.  How will people have faith in the Constitution?   When they were told to go and be elected, they were elected but they are still waiting for offices up to now.  Another election is coming and nothing has been done in this Parliament to address that.  Whether to amend it or not, nothing has been done.  It is still there.  So to me, when you do not respect your own Constitution, then you do not respect the will of the people and if you do not respect the will of the people, then there is anarchy.  It builds from that when we do not respect the Constitution and I think constitutionalism is important.

You have got the aspect of the police as well, in terms of the human rights governance which must be there.  I personally was involved in the elections in Hurungwe West, where the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission was very clear in saying that the police in this country and many others, must undergo training before elections.  This addresses that very need because whether you like it or not, without addressing that, people will complain that the elections were not free, fair and credible because a certain section of the Constitution was not aligned.  So to me, it is very important that as we are pushing towards that, this is done.  We cannot pick what we want and say this we have done and so forth.

Continued next page

(371 VIEWS)