Government will not speculate over circumstances that led to High Court judge, Justice Edith Mushore’s failure to attend to her duties for several months, but will allow a tribunal constituted by President Mnangagwa to unravel issues around her absence from work.
President Mnangagwa yesterday swore in a three-member
tribunal to be chaired by retired judge, Justice Maphios Cheda, to investigate
Justice Mushore’s suitability to hold office.
Justice Mushore is accused of failing to report for duty
for several months.
This comes as President Mnangagwa received a report on the
findings of a committee set up to investigate the suitability to hold office of
Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Thompson Mabhikwa.
The tribunal will be chaired by retired Justice Cheda and has
legal practitioners — Advocate Charles Warara and Ms Yvonne Masvora as members.
In an interview after a brief ceremony to swear in the
three-member tribunal, Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister
Ziyambi Ziyambi said it was the tribunal that would provide clarity as to why
the judge failed to report for work as expected and make recommendations on the
validity of reasons that would have been proffered.
“That is what he (Justice Cheda and committee members) is
going to tell us. He is going to go through all that, try to find out where she
is, find out the circumstances and then write a report to say these are the
circumstances, the person is AWOL, maybe sick, then come up with
recommendations. At this juncture, we do not want to speculate, maybe she is
sick,” said Minister Ziyambi.
He said failure to report for work by a judge was treated
differently from an ordinary person who would have done so in that provisions
of the Constitution would be invoked with regard to a judicial officer such as
a judge.
“It is different from an ordinary person, this is a judge.
A judge’s removal is in terms of the Constitution whereby the Judicial Service
Commission will inform the President of the circumstances that this person has
not been coming to work. That is a serious thing to do and when the President
is informed, the Constitution obliges him to set up a Commission of Inquiry to
look into these issues and then make recommendations,” Minister Ziyambi said.
He said the Government had confidence in the calibre of
members constituting the tribunal given their rich legal backgrounds.
“This is our retired judge and we have two seasoned lawyers
and we believe they will carry out this call of duty very well. He (Justice
Cheda) has chaired several commissions appointed by the President and we are
very confident that this will be done within the shortest period of time,”
Minister Ziyambi said.
Justice Cheda said the tribunal presumed that Justice
Mushore had a good reason for her failure to come to work.
“If you are not coming to work, you must have a reason,
that could be a good reason or a bad reason but reasonable grounds. As of now,
I do not know why the Honourable judge has not been attending to her duties. We
will have to find out, we presume that she has a good reason, she will tell us.
All I know is that there has been a complaint that she has not been reporting
for duty,” he said. Herald
0 comments:
Post a Comment