Zimbabwe legislator says the stress is just too much when one is recalled from Parliament

Admittedly Mr. Speaker Sir, there is a reason and the reason is to say, if you belong to a political party you also have to concede that certain of your rights are whittled down by virtue of your belonging to a party.  Nevertheless, a member who is elected into the august House becomes a national leader by virtue of being a Member of Parliament.  I recall Mr. Speaker Sir, in 2005 when there was a split in MDC – there were about 41 Members of Parliament for MDC then and 20 went on one side and 21 the other side.  The leadership in the MDC then decided that no one would write a letter for recall primarily because those members had been elected and should be allowed to continue and complete their terms of office.

Then fast forward it to 2008 and 2013 elections up to the 2018 elections, you then realise that we have lost a number of parliamentarians from the MDC and even from ZANU PF.  I recall I was not yet in this House, but I recall seeing other Members of Parliament from ZANU PF who were perceived to be gamatox then being recalled from this august House.  I also know of a number of Members of Parliament from MDC, the likes of Hon. Madzimure and Hon. Biti being recalled from Parliament.  I also recall Mr. Speaker Sir, even Hon. Dr. Khupe here also being recalled from this august House and subsequently Mr. Speaker Sir, you are aware that as we speak right now, this Parliament in this tenure has already lost more than 35 Members of Parliament through recalls. The challenge Mr. Speaker is not that a political party should not always have a position or say pertaining their deployees in Parliament or in council, they should actually have a say but it is the methodology or mechanism upon which political parties are handling this matter.

In my view Mr. Speaker, I think Hon. Mliswa is right in a certain way. Right in the sense that the current provisions as they stand are so narrow and are easy to manipulate. When you have got a clause which simply says when a member ceases to be a member of a political party but apart from Tekere, most of the people that have been recalled in this august House would not have ceased to members of a political party. They would be alleged to have ceased and unfortunately there is no due process to then balance to say have these people really ceased to be members of a political party.

In my view, there is a need for 129 (k) to be codified in an Act of Parliament so that there are steps and procedures that need to then be followed to simply say if a party wants to remove somebody, there should be procedures and processes that follow. I know most Members of Parliament or all of us, when you are on the right side of the leadership of a political party, you always consider yourself to be safe, but one thing that we have learnt in history and life is that one week in politics is a very long time. Today you are very safe, tomorrow you can actually be shaken off and be seen to be on the other side.

This issue on recalls, no one can claim to be safe and say I am sure I will never be recalled. All of us are potential casualties of this clause. The reason why it happens and the reason it pains, I know the process of coming into Parliament. Hon. Mliswa talks about it to say the parliamentarians – it is not that they get a lot of money or perks but the cost for one to come to Parliament is huge. Some people actually invest a lot of their family wealth for them to make it to Parliament. Some of them, first for you to contest primary elections, it is an easy task. One has to pump his or her own resources to the process.

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