Constitutional sense from unlikely source

ZANU PF, the Mdc T and the NCA’s varying propositions on how the country’s executive must be constituted are, to give the most balanced view, reasonable, ridiculous and very ridiculous respectively.

For Zanu PF the preference is to retain the old executive order comprising the President, two Vice-Presidents and Cabinet while both the Mdc T and the Nca would, although for different reasons, favour an executive system with a President, Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The Mdc T wants a directly elected President who appoints a Prime Minister ‘from a party which commands a majority in Parliament.’ Dr Lovemore Madhuku’s Nca is proposing a largely ceremonial President, alongside an executive Prime Minister.

It is common cause that the parties are agreed that whether the country is under an executive President as contemplated by Zanu PF and the Mdc T or by an executive Prime Minister as absurdly proposed by the NCA, that President or executive Prime Minister (whatever the case might be) should be subject for election for a maximum of two-five year terms. This, in my view, is a plausible development.

What is most disconcerting, however, is how all the parties could so swiflty agree to perpetuate what clearly is an out-dated, undemocratic notion that to occupy the highest office in the land one must be 40 or 35 years of age. In progressive democracies the determination whether one is fit to occupy public office, including the highest office in the land, is left not to considerations of age but of pragmatism, pedigree and the political will to address the real issues of the day.

It stands to reason that if one is eligible to vote they must correspondingly be eligible to be voted for or against. If not then we might as well change the same Constitution to allow for voting eligibility to start only at 40 or at 35. They can no longer continue to take people for granted without serious consequences.

We can no longer tolerate a situation where the empirically larger section of our society is made to enjoy only the remnants of our democracy. If we are going to be a democracy let us be a fully-fledged one. It is either we are a democracy or not.

Legally, if this constitutional aberration is not addressed now it is not inconceivable that those who might feel discriminated against will challenge it and challenge it successfully before an independent, impartial constitutional court.

Zimbabwe experienced an extraordinary political situation in the several years preceding the advent of the unity government. What we cannot afford now is a repeat of that anomalous situation let alone an aggravated version of it. The current constitution-making process is a refreshing one and one that must seek to make normal what at best was an appalling situation.

The question though is how does one go about normalizing it? Shall we do so by proposing to have an executive President alongside an executive prime minister? The answer is a resounding ‘NO’. Shall we do so by proposing to have a largely ceremonial President and an executive prime Minister? Definitely not!

What the shortsighted and clearly partisan Mdc T along with the patently hopeless Nca need to grasp is the simple fact that aside from it being the de facto position in the Sadc region to have an executive president, a vice-president and no Prime Minister at all, a system that has proven to work perfectly well in Africa and beyond, including in the United States of America, the suggestion to incorporate a Prime Minister within our political dispensation is not only a primitive one, it is one that evokes terrible memories of a past we are still grappling to come to terms with.

Whether that incorporation results in a weak Prime Minister or an all too powerful one, it is a grave political oversight to dismiss the possible political contestation that might ensue as inconsequential.

In any event, both propositions are fraught with practical problems. For instance, the Mdc T view ignores the possibility that the President of the day might well belong to the very ‘party with a majority in parliament’. The Nca positio... ...

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