The Sunday Mail
WITH the elections over and the 80 senators and 279 elected members of the House of Assembly sworn in, and the two presiding officers now in place, the 10th Parliament of Zimbabwe is ready to get down to business.
And if Parliament, and all its members, are to fulfil the duties and responsibilities the nation expects and the Constitution demands, it will be very hard work. This must be done willingly and effectively, together and individually. Everyone needs to pull their weight, and pull it in the right direction, if Zimbabwe is to move forward and all Zimbabweans are to see significant progress in living their dreams of better lives.
Under the Constitution, Parliament is the partner and counterweight of the President and the rest of the Executive branch, and this is stressed by the fact that the Chief Justice swears in both the President and the two presiding officers of Parliament.
All members of the National Assembly and the Senate are elected — some directly, like the 210 constituency MPs, the 18 senator chiefs who were elected by their peers, and the two members who represent people living with disabilities. Then there are the 60 proportionally represented women MPs and the 60 senators, also elected by proportional representation, with both groups chosen by how well their parties’ candidates fared in the constituency elections.
But these two groups represent provinces in Parliament and not only have much wider constituencies and so a broader outlook, but also provide an important channel for representing groups that might feel they could otherwise be voiceless.
Some MPs in the past have seen their role as simply providing their party with a vote at the conclusion of parliamentary debates, following the lead of the whips when names are ticked off and only sitting in their chamber when it is their turn to ensure there is a quorum. Otherwise, they are almost totally silent and are even in committees just to make up the numbers without contributing anything.
Speaker Jacob Mudenda, now in his third Parliament as the presiding officer and who must have seen the full range of what MPs do and do not do, emphatically disabused them of following this minimalist path when thanking the membership for re-electing him.
He took, as his starting point, the oath that everyone made and signed, and urged them to read the fine print. They swore loyalty to Zimbabwe, and that was not just an area delineated by borders on a map, but a nation and a people that would be there long after members had finished their watch in Parliament.
He stressed that members were there to represent communities, and he had been troubled in the past that some never even spoke up for these communities. He further said they had to play an important role within these constituencies and provinces they represented that went far beyond the brief outline in the Constitution.
Their constituencies are not just a bunch of voters who line up every five years, but communities of people with problems, hopes, needs and desires. An active parliamentarian needs to be involved and see those thousands of individuals as people with different needs. They should be ready to go far beyond the line of duty.
The MPs need to understand that they represent a constituency, as well as a party. And that means they represent those who voted for them; those who voted for someone else; those who do not vote, for example, children; and even those who could have voted, but did not bother. They all need a voice, and the MP is that voice.
Here, the proportionally elected women in the National Assembly and the party-list senators have an additional role to play. A constituency MP goes to Parliament because they got the most votes in the election, but up to almost half of the voters in their constituency voted for someone else. They are supposed to represent these as well, but the party-list women and senators can add to their provincial duties by making sure the minority voters do have a voice.
An additional duty for every MP and senator outside the Cabinet or other Government appointment is to sit in a committee. While the debates in the chambers tend to hog the headlines, these days, the bulk of the work is done in the portfolio committees, where small groups drawn from both houses and both parties, plus the independent chiefs and the representatives of people with disabilities, go into detail on issues, policies, existing legislation and proposed laws.
In the last Parliament, this was shown at its finest on information laws. Everyone agreed the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) had to go. The replacement was the important element, and that had to be done right. Here, a committee after some incredibly hard work, came up with a consensus position, in detail, clause by clause, which the Government and the rest of Parliament accepted with acclamation.
The better committees, those with knowledgeable members, prepared to put in the hours, frequently found gaps in ministry activities, or found they could highlight problems a ministry might have, or could suggest ways laws could be amended to make them more responsive or more equitable. All this shows that being a parliamentarian goes far beyond sitting in a chamber every now and then, drawing a salary and other perks, but is a full-time job that requires real commitment and which, when done properly, can make a difference to people’s lives.
