POLITICAL Actors Dialogue (Polad) partners have upped the
stakes on President Emmerson Mnangagwa, threatening to walk out on him if his
government does not withdraw the Constitutional Amendment Bill gazetted by
Justice minister, Ziyambi Ziyambi early this year.
Chairperson of the Polad’s gvernance and legislative agenda
subcommittee, Lovemore Madhuku, said his committee had recommended to the group
to have the Constitutional Amendment Bill withdrawn.
He said the recommendation was adopted as a resolution,
meaning Mnangagwa should now instruct his minister to withdraw the Bill.
Madhuku warned that if Mnangagwa did not enforce the
resolution, it would be a clear sign that the platform was not effective and
would therefore not need to continue.
“Given that the recommendations on the Constitutional
Amendment Bill are unanimous, a refusal by government will be a disbanding of
Polad. There will be no Polad to talk about. Zanu PF is part of Polad. It runs
the government. If it is sincere in being part to the Polad recommendations, it
has to influence the government to accept the Polad position,” Madhuku said.
Parties in Polad are increasingly under pressure from their
supporters to record some wins and stop behaving like they were owned by Zanu PF.
Madhuku said apart from recommending the withdrawal of the
Bill, the committee also said there was no need for government to change the
terms and conditions of judges.
“We found that the Bill has areas that you would accept,
they are very few but many of the areas that are in the Bill, we feel they are
unacceptable and not to be debated further,” he said.
“I need to say here the one which is of interest to the
public, which has come out of Polad is the area related to the Judiciary. All
the proposed changes to the Judiciary which are contained in the Bill we
totally recommended a rejection of those proposals, so that we remain with the
current constitutional provisions of the Judiciary, meaning that there must not
be a change to the retirement age of 70. There must not be that provision which
is suggesting yearly extensions up to five years for judges of the Supreme
Court and the Constitutional Court, which we have made clear.”
Polad said it would also write its own Bill on electoral
reforms, making it the third such effort after Zimbabwe Elections Support
Network (Zesn) which has since submitted a draft to Speaker of the House of
Assembly Jacob Mudenda and the MDC which said it’s in the process of coming up
with its own Bill.
Zanu PF representative in Polad Paul Mangwana was not
immediately available for comment as his number was unreachable, while Ziyambi
was not picking calls. Newsday
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