Lovemore Madhuku, the leader of a fringe opposition party, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), has said the Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 2 could fail to sail through Parliament as some Zanu PF MPs were opposed to it.
Addressing members of the Young Journalists Association (YOJA) recently, Madhuku, who is a vocal critic of the proposed Bill on the Political Actors Dialogue’s (POLAD) platform, said:
Yes, there are MPs in Parliament who are opposed to the Bill and they can achieve a lot. It is not a question of numbers.
First, they must persuade the conscience of the other MPs. Secondly, they must oppose every clause with good reasons.
… Zanu PF has a very thin two-thirds majority, winning over a few MPs from that side will stop the Bill. In the Senate, we only have to convince two traditional chiefs for the Bill to fail.
Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 2 seeks among other things, to give the president powers to appoint judges in higher courts without any public interviews and to scrap the running mate clause agreed on in the 2013 New Constitution.
Those who are opposed to the amendments claim that President Emmerson Mnangagwa intends to create an imperial presidency.