*HON. CHINOTIMBA: My follow-up question is that the Leader of the House Vice President, Hon. Mnangagwa is in the House and you, as the Speaker are also here in the same House. We may find ourselves trying to digress from issues. That is why I specifically mentioned that last week you were not there and we asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs about the diplomatic passports and that is when the Minister gave his response that it was not his responsibility but the Speaker’s responsibility.
As far as I know, I do not want you to be involved in this mud-slinging and apportioning of blame. In this country, we have a lot of mud-slinging and whosoever has a problem or has messed up tries to apportion the blame on other people and quickly address the Vice President on their issue. What we know however is that, Ministers are MPs who are elected to be Ministers through the President’s prerogative. Mr. Speaker Sir, we would not want to have somebody who, when elected to be a Minister then tends to look down upon peers. When you even look at the working conditions of a Minister and an MP, MPs may be better than the Minister. My request is for you to enlighten us where the Ministers are apportioning blame on you, yet you are blameless. When I discussed that, I was told that I was going to tarnish your image. It really pains me that I should direct such questions to the Vice President of the country. As Members of Parliament, we have the privilege of interacting with the Vice President. We have a machine which produces 10 000 passports per minute – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] – So, where is the problem in issuing all the Members of Parliament the diplomatic passports?
Therefore, in as far as I am concerned; there is no reason for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to ask for few names to work on. I would understand, if it was in the past when we had slow machines but Government has allocated equipment to Home Affairs which is able to produce 10 000 passports in ten minutes. So, where is the problem? I sympathise with you Mr. Speaker, there is mudslinging, people are trying to tarnish your name. Unfortunately, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is not in, I would have asked him this question because I have a feeling, he lied to us.
Mr. Speaker Sir, as Hon. Members, why should we denied some privileges? We do not have diplomatic passports; we do not have all those other privileges. Where did we go wrong? I thank you.
*THE HON. SPEAKER: Order, order, Hon. Chinotimba we have a saying that whenever there is something being said, somebody will know about it. About mud-slinging, as long as you are a leader, whatever goes wrong, there is mud-slinging and you are the victim but as leaders when there is that problem which is flung at you, all you do is to rectify whatever problems could be arising. I am glad the Hon. Vice President Mnangagwa is here and I will give him chance to respond.
*THE VICE PRESIDENT AND MINISTER OF JUSTICE, LEGAL AND PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS (HON. MNANGAGWA): Mr. Speaker Sir, I will start by supporting what has been said by the Speaker that he wrote a letter asking that all Members of Parliament be issued with diplomatic passports. His argument was that Members travel to different parts of the world. What happens is, whenever they get to the airports or to other areas, all Members of Parliament from other countries are given that dignified respect but Members of Parliament of Zimbabwe are searched and frisked, which is very bad. The Minister then said there are going to be a few who are going to be given those diplomatic passports because in the last Parliament, we had some Ministers who were given those diplomatic passports which will last for five years. Therefore, they have them and that limits the number of people to access that.
Mr. Speaker Sir, the Leader of the Opposition can have the passport renewed. Hence, having received that response, the Speaker then asked me to prepare for a meeting with the President on the issue and I facilitated that. He said, we have heard the response given by the Executive on the issuance of diplomatic passports, but he then asked for special dispensation for Members of Parliament, who attend different Parliamentary forums in other countries. I personally went to His Excellency accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The President denied that privilege. We said, well, let us let things cool down and if things cool down, there could be a chance of attaining that.
Mr. Speaker Sir, we then decided to reduce the number of people and go with the Chairpersons. We then approach His Excellency on the issue. We said, these people travel a lot around the globe on business, please give them that diplomatic passport. After a long discussion, the President agreed and he said those few selected should be given and Hon. Mumbengegwi was advised to give those diplomatic passports. The Speaker then said, now that we have these few people who have been given the passports, let us give the President time, because we cannot just go to him after such a short period. I said Mr. Speaker, I think you have turned too much heat on me, let us give it a rest. So, I am waiting for the Speaker to give me time so that we come and resuscitate the issuance of diplomatic passports to Members of Parliament.
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