State Media|JUSTICE, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi says a report towards implementation of political and electoral reforms will soon be presented to President Mnangagwa and Cabinet for approval.
Government has since established an inter-ministerial taskforce on political and electoral reforms chaired by Minister Ziyambi.
Speaking during a seminar on political and electoral reforms in Kadoma at the weekend, the Minister said Government was committed to implementing political and electoral reforms to enhance democracy.
“I have a team of senior officials (inter-ministerial committee) to look into it (electoral reforms) and come up with important issues arising from elections and this is the work that we are doing which is work in progress.
“At this stage it would be very premature for me to start giving a road map before I even present what we have done so far to the President, then subsequently to Cabinet for approval soon,” he said.
Ziyambi said while Government was eager to carry out political and electoral reforms in the shortest possible time, this cannot be done within two months as has been called for by the Speaker of Parliament Advocate Jacob Mudenda.
This is because the Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs also needs to be accorded an opportunity to produce critical recommendations to be fed into a report that will be presented to President Mnangagwa.
“I understand, Honourable Speaker is saying let’s do it fast within the next two months but we also want the committee to produce a report so that we can have it and see the issues outstanding that are not within our matrix and then we also present and follow the necessary channels.
“But also out of the respect of the work that has been happening, I have said let’s hold on and hear what the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee is doing; we get some of the critical recommendations that come out of that and feed into the report that we will present to His Excellency and subsequently then we come up with a matrix on how to implement going forward,” said Ziyambi.
The Government hopes to amend the Electoral Act by mid next year in sync with recommendations made by observer missions during last year’s harmonised elections.
The electoral reforms are part of the Government’s efforts in transforming the political and economic environments, as it seeks to entrench democratic values and freedoms in line with Vision 2030 of achieving an upper middle income economy.
They are also in line with the Second Republic’s pledge to incorporate views of other players into different laws that affect society and open up the democratic space to enhance good governance.
Ziyambi said the two-day seminar, which ended yesterday was important as it allows the inter-ministerial taskforce to gather relevant information pertaining to the political and electoral reforms.
He said as Government was working towards implementing electoral reforms, it has been acknowledged that there were other issues that could not wait to be tackled.
“A case in point is the Public Order and Security Act (Posa). We agreed that let’s proceed while we are doing the work that we are doing. We are also moving fast to unbundle AIPPA (Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act), Professor (Tafataona) Mahoso is working tirelessly so that we come up with three bills (Freedom of information; Data protection; and Protection of personal information),” he said.
“So we are unbundling, we are freeing up the space, we have the maintenance of peace which is very contentious and some are telling us that the right to demonstrate is very absolute don’t touch a demonstrator; the police must never be involved.”
Ziyambi said recently 10 ambassadors from the most powerful nations came to his office and said police should not be involved in demonstrations.
“I reminded them that in England, if you are in London if you want to demonstrate, you go to the mayor to seek clearance and the mayor of London has got police with arresting powers,” he said.