The ManicaPost
Chenai Mutasa
THE proposed constitutional amendments were long overdue as some of the sections enshrined in the 2013 national Constitution are foreign.
The current Constitution is largely a product of a compromise by ZANU PF and MDC.
Government has gazetted 27 proposed amendments to the Constitution, among them the termination of the joint election of the President and his two deputies through the removal of the running mate clause.
The joint election of the country’s top leadership was set to commence in 2023.
Other constitutional proposals include allowing the President to appoint seven non-constituency ministers up from the current five, and also extending the women’s quota in Parliament by another two terms. The women’s quota was set to expire during the current Parliament.
This article will zero in on the clause seeking removal of running mates.
The amendment seeks to alter Section 92 (2), which currently reads: “Every candidate for election as President must nominate two persons to stand for election jointly with him or her as Vice Presidents, and must designate one of those persons as his or her candidate for First Vice President and the other as his or her candidate for second Vice President”.
Multiple Centres of Power
Section 92 (3), which is also set to be altered currently reads: “The President and the Vice President are directly elected jointly by registered voters throughout Zimbabwe, and procedure for their election is as prescribed in the Electoral Law.”
The aforementioned sections, if amended, will read:
“As soon as the President assumes office, he or she shall appoint not more than two persons to be Vice-Presidents, who shall be persons qualified for election as President in terms of Section 91 (1), and who shall take, before the Chief Justice or the next most senior judge available, the oath of a Vice-President in the form set out in the Third Schedule”.
There are various reasons which make the “running mate” clause suspicious.
The irony is that the two protagonists in the formation of the 2013 constitution, the late former President Cde Robert Mugabe and the late former Prime Minister Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, didn’t want the “running mates” clause to affect them.
The joint election of the country’s top leadership was set to commence in 2023 and the two might have calculated that they will no longer be participants in the election, hence their acceptance of the controversial clause.
The question to ask is: If the two didn’t want the clause to affect them, why would the same clause be a burden to us? The clause should therefore be removed as it is of no benefit to the development of the nation, save for the creation of multiple centres of power.
Since the attainment of independence in 1980, the norm has been that the elected President would appoint his preferred Vice Presidents.
The system has worked well without any glitches and should be allowed to continue. Why fix something which is not broken?
An elected Vice President is a threat to the nation’s peace and stability.
It will create multiple centres of power as the Vice Presidents might view themselves as at par with the President by virtue of being products of the ballot.
Insubordinate
Once a Vice President thinks he or she derives his or her mandate from the people, and not the President, chances are that he or she might be insubordinate to the President, the ultimate authority.
This may give sow seeds of discord in Government, and likely to result the leaders pulling in different directions.
A Vice President must derive his or her mandate from the appointing authority like in the current scenario where the VPs are appointed and work under the instructions of an elected President.
Another reason which calls for the deletion of the running mate clause is that it is costly to Government.
For instance, the proposed deletion of the running mates in the constitution will allow the President to appoint the VPs replacement in the event of his death at the soonest possible time.
But the scenario is different if an elected Vice President dies.
It means a by-election will be held for the people to choose the next VP.
It is common knowledge that by-elections are costly and time consuming and should be avoided at all costs.
That money can be put to better use that benefit the generality of Zimbabweans such as construction of roads, education and health facilities.
A hard fact that might be a bitter pill to swallow to others is that since 1980, Vice Presidents were products of Zanu PF.
The trend was that a Zanu PF VP will automatically be the country’s Vice President.
To then imagine a situation where a country’s Vice President is not the ruling Party’s Vice President is awkward and scary as it will create tension between the ruling party and Government.
This scenario once played out in Malawi during the days of President Bingu wa Mutharika and Dr Joyce Banda.
Dr Banda was once a Vice President in Mutharika’s party — the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). When the two fell out, Mutharika fired Dr Banda from the ruling party, but couldn’t fire her from Government as it was unconstitutional to do so.
This created tension in the country as the president could not see eye-to-eye with the VP.
Government projects were derailed as the top two leaders pulled from different angles.
Moreover, to err is human and the elected vice president might make mistakes that might be costly to Government operations.
The current Constitution empowers the President to relive his deputy of his duties in the event he or she messes up.
The norm is under threat as the constitution is set to usher in the running mate clause which starts to be operational in 2023.
Mess up
If the clause is not repealed, the President will be forced to work with a Vice President who might mess up and compromise Government’s operations, just like in Mutharika and Banda scenario.
The Malawian president failed to fire Banda from the post of the country’s Vice President as it was considered a breach of constitution.
This caused faction in the party. According to the Malawian constitution, a vice president can be removed through an impeachment process, which requires a majority of the National Assembly.
Therefore, the Malawi court declared the move unconstitutional.
The court declared that Dr Banda could be fired from her party, but not from Government because the removal from the two positions was different.
As such, Dr Banda was regarded as the legal vice president even though she was no longer the VP of the Democratic People’s Party (DPP).
This is what the proposed amendments are set to address to avoid a similar situation happening in our mother land.
Progressive Zimbabweans must embrace the proposed constitutional amendments as they are meant to promote democracy and empower historically disadvantaged groups such as women and youths.
