Mutambara says talk of elections for next year is ‘misplaced’

By Violet Gonda
22 March 2010

Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara has ‘spiced up’ a one day retreat for ministers and parliamentarians, saying talk about holding elections next year were misplaced. Mutambara said that if elections are held next year they would likely produce more people like him, who got into government through the backdoor, as a result of fraudulent elections.

The Deputy Prime Minister was giving his closing remarks at a retreat convened by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in Harare on Monday. Tsvangirai had organised the retreat to try and defuse mounting tensions between the ministers and the backbenchers, represented by parliamentary portfolio committee chairpersons and the three parties’ chief whips.

Both ZANU PF and MDC-T have indicated that they want elections to be held next year. Robert Mugabe went further to say elections will be held next year with or without a new constitution.

But the MDC-M leader indicated that while there is talk about elections he doesn’t believe they will be held next year.

Tongai Matutu, the chairperson of the Justice and Legal Affairs Parliamentary Committee and MDC-T Masvingo Urban MP, said Mutambara may have said that to protect his position, but that he raised some important issues.

Mutambara said there cannot be talk about elections when the constitution making process has not kicked off and he said problems of legitimacy would continue to arise as a result of a defective constitution.

The Deputy Minister also said the issue of violence has not been dealt with and there has been no real attempt at any type of national healing. People are still deeply traumatised by the 2008 violent elections.

Matutu said Mutambara’s closing remarks were frank and honest as he pointed out that he is a beneficiary of election fraud.

Meanwhile, the meeting was held against a background of increasing friction between the frontbench and parliamentarians. In his opening remarks Speaker of Parliament Lovemore Moyo said ministers were not respecting the role of parliament and have not been bothering to respond to questions. He said the ministers come to parliament but as soon as they are supposed to respond to written questions they immediately leave the chamber, a clear indication that they are not prepared or interested in responding.

Matutu said: “And clearly for last week that was very embarrassing, whereby 48 written questions that were on the Order Paper, none of those questions were answered. All of them were deferred on the basis that ministers had not turned up.”

He said some answers from the ministers are arrogant and don’t add value to the debates, thereby undermining the role of parliament. Some legislators had posed questions over a month ago, but have still not received a response from ministers.

Matutu said some of the ministers who have failed to respond to questions include the Minister of Transport and Communications, Local Government Minister and the Minister of Health. The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy had also clashed with the Mines Ministry over allegations of corruption.
Ministers on the other hand said they felt the MPs in portfolio committees were harassing and embarrassing them.

It is understood the meeting managed to ‘iron out’ some misunderstandings and tried to create a platform to explain the different roles of the stakeholders. Surprisingly some ministers said they were not aware they had to attend parliamentary committee meetings.