By Delicious Mathuthu
Gweru Urban Member of Parliament, Honourable Brian Dube, says ZANU PF is one of his biggest challenge in Parliament during his first term as a Legislator, passing ‘illogical and unhelpful’ laws through the whipping system even after sound debates.
Honourable Dube, who is a lawyer by profession, was responding to questions by Kwedu News on some of the challenges he faced in the past five years in Parliament.
Honourable Dube says the recent passing of the Patriotic Act is a good example of such laws.
“A real challenge to my tenure was ZANU PF. ZANU PF in its defiance of logic has ignored sound debates and proceeded to abuse the majority rule in Parliament and the whipping system to pass unreasonable legislation.
“We have made sound debates on many Bills and ZANU PF proceeded to ignore reason and pursue illogical and unhelpful laws such as the Criminal Laws Amendment Bill (Patriotic Act) amongst many(other) shocking legislations,” he said.
Apart from ZANU PF whipping, Honourable Dube says politicking in Parliament was also a challenge as it prevented completion of some of the work as Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee.
“Another challenge is political intolerance and partisan behaviour that caused, at some point, Committee meetings being disrupted.
“This caused the Public Accounts Committee (for example) failing to conclude the ZESA (Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority) Report,” he said.
Speaking to Kwedu News, ZANU PF Spokesperson Cde Christopher Mutsvangwa, brushed off the accusation saying majority rule remains supreme in a democratic society.
“That is how laws are passed in a democracy. The will of the majority emanating from elections,” he said.
“Best his party campaign hard and convincing to the voters. On winning, he can canvass their majority deputies to govern the way he desires.
“Otherwise we cannot pass laws on the whimsical,” Mutsvangwa said.
Back to his constituency Gweru Urban, Honourable Dube says besides having managed to complete several developmental projects under the Constituency Development Funds (CDF), which include solar powered boreholes, clinics, schools, among several others, it was not without its challenges.
“There were many challenges. The first challenge was inflation, and this impacted on the CDF projects as the value of money was seriously eroded.
“Inflation coupled with late disbursements of funds negatively impacted on our projects.
“The other challenge was COVID-19 lockdown which caused us not to work for nearly two years,” he said.
Honourable is seeking a second term as Gweru Urban Legislator under the Movement for Democratic Change ticket, saying there are still projects that need implementation in his constituency, as well as demanding transparency and accountability in Parliament that need to be done.
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