Story by Bruce Chahwanda, Political Editor
THE Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Honourable Ziyambi Ziyambi, says the constitutional Amendment Number 3 Bill has been the most debated Bill in the history of Parliament, with at least 110 members having participated so far, while more are expected next week Tuesday.
The Constitutional Amendment Number 3 Bill debate entered the sixth day in parliament with legislators showing an appetite to proffer their views regarding the Bill.
The high turnout has been described by Honourable Ziyambi as historic in parliament.
“In the history of our Parliament, you are right, this is the most debated bill. We deliberately decided to have that direction because if you recall, when we did public consultations in the past, we used to have one public consultation per province. This time around, we increased the involvement. We had one public consultation per admin district, which means we deployed many of our honourable members to participate in the public consultation, and it raised their appetite to want to debate.
The majority of our MPs, when they stand up to debate they emphasise that I am speaking on behalf of those that I represent, and they cite proceedings of the public consultation, and we think it is healthy for constitutional democracy. It is healthy for the lawmaking process because it allows us to refine the legislation and come up with a bill that has been scrutinised thoroughly by members of Parliament. What is next is when I did the count, I will check, we were slightly over a hundred, around 110 MPs that have debated so far in the history of our Parliament. I do not think we have ever had a bill that has those numbers, and we are happy about that, and we are still happy to have a couple more MPs, those that are willing to debate again,” he said.
While some observers have described the debate as tedious repetition, debate will resume this Tuesday, and that might culminate into the committee stage depending on the willingness of parliamentarians to engage.
“So on Tuesday we will allow those who want to debate, but once we feel that all the MPs who are willing to debate have debated, I will then give my responding speech addressing issues that were raised by honourable members and that will pave the way for us now to move to the committee stage of the bill. It is dependent on how the debate goes on Tuesday, but honourable MPs are repeating what others have said, and we see a slowing down in the appetite to debate.
Hopefully, if all goes well maybe on Tuesday we may have fewer MPs willing to debate and then we can proceed but it is not in my hands, it is in the hands of those that want to debate and I will check on Tuesday how many have registered to debate but if we do not have lots of them to debate then we can proceed to the committee stage,” he said.
Among other popular provisions are the lengthening of the electoral cycle for the President, legislators, and councillors, along with allowing the President to appoint ten more Senators.
The management of the voters’ roll by the Registrar General’s office, and the setting up of the Zimbabwe Electoral Delimitation Commission was also debated.
