What transpired yesterday during the impeachment of Mugabe proceedings – full debate

Mr. Speaker Sir, I believe it is also a symptom of bad governance to burn precious and very scarce tax dollars.  We have a very shameful budget of only $4 billion when a country like Zambia across the road has a budget of $12 billion or $14 billion when us, a country that is richer not only in mineral wealth but in the human resources that we are, are sitting around to discuss crumbs of $4 billion that are not enough to do anything.

Mr. Speaker Sir, it is bad governance to burn those scarce taxpayers dollars in holding party political rallies during business hours.  It is no secret Mr. Speaker Sir that there have been interfaces and meet the people tours by Government led by His Excellency, the President and his wife during working hours, during the week.  Even a country that has the highest Gross Domestic Product cannot afford to have its leader taking its Ministers across the country burning the little dollars that there are when the country is in ruin.

Mr. Speaker Sir, it is also bad governance and it was said by Hon. Maridadi to have the privilege of being able to go to the most expensive hospitals, such as in Singapore and have the most expensive health care when the nationals in the country that you are governing cannot even afford to buy panado.  The people who marched on the streets this last Saturday; this historic march are sick and tired of not having the capacity to get health care. Even in simple council clinics, people are suffering and it is not good governance to then be a leader of a country who is able to get luxury treatment all over when the 12 million inhabitants of your own country are not able to access even basic health care.

Mr. Speaker Sir, I sadly conclude that His Excellency is guilty of failing to obey, uphold or defend the Constitution.  I will just mention a few examples that support that he be impeached by this august House.  Mr. Speaker Sir, Section 17 of our Constitution requires that there shall be gender balance in all elected and appointed positions.  It is no secret that the President of Zimbabwe appointed his Cabinet initially with only three women and he said that there are no women to appoint. That is failure to uphold the Constitution. –[HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear]- I will also not speak very much about the issue of falling asleep. I think we should talk about it. Zimbabwe had become a laughing stock in the world because of the fast movement of video images. His recent appearance at the United Nations General Assembly made each and every Zimbabwean clinch with embarrassment.

 If we do not impeach the President, Zimbabwe is going to continue being distinguished for dubious reasons, that is for having a President who sleeps at world functions when the rest of the world is discussing progress. His Excellency is unable to perform the functions of office. He is even forgetting the other values that require unity along good governance. For example, I was shocked to hear him mocking the Kalanga people of Zimbabwe saying that they are uneducated and they go across the borders, yet he forgets that he is the one who is responsible for spearheading that development that would allow Zimbabweans to stay in their country.

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