Opinion By Ngqabutho Mabhena Zimbabwe Communist Party Leader|Our electoral system is designed in such a way that , the losing Presidential candidate will not make it into our National Assembly. This means that, the country loses out on the best brains as the losing candidate will be forced to early political retirement.

While am not a fan of Adv Nelson Chamisa, it will be a huge lose to our country not to have him in the National Assembly beyond August 2018. His fans might attack me claiming that, post August 2018, he will be at State House. While this is ideal, the reality is that , this will not happen. The British, as they have done over the years in the rest of Africa, they have chosen their man for the next five years to be the Head of State in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe remains a neo colonial state.

For us to continue to tap on the brains of the losing candidate, we must agree that, a party that wins seats in parliament must be given a non constituency seat for its losing Presidential candidate. Am not a lawyer but am sure my lawyer comrades can make a strong constitutional argument on this. Since 2000 , we had opposition MPs who were not led by their leader in parliament as the late Morgan Tsvangirai could not make it following his lose first in his constituency and in the 2002 Presidential election. During the Inclusive government, the country benefited from Morgan Tsvangirai when he was Prime Minister but we again lost out when he lost in the 2013 elections. If one looks in the South African parliament, opposition leaders have done well in representing their constituencies in parliament. Of course their electoral system is different from ours but l do not think its a bad idea to amend our constitution to create a seat for a party leader whose party have won seats in parliament.

Let’s engage on this comrades!