By Kennedy Kaitano- I listened with great admiration the interview by one of the founding members of the MDC, Senator Engineer Mudzuri where he emphasised the need for leaders to sit down and talk to each other.

It is progressive to talk, but it can also be detrimental if the people involved have no common purpose, and it will be misdirected talks that are influenced by a Supreme Court judgement merely suggests that it is vital that you hold an Extra Ordinary Congress.

The ruling gives room for failure as it gives 120 days for those involved to try and reconcile to the point of being able to organise the Extra Ordinary Congress in accordance to the processes that should be followed in organising an Extra Ordinary Congress, failure which the case is water under the bridge.

Political parties are voluntary organisations which only brings together people with the same goals. Where some publicly declare that they are in politics to make money, or that they will always support President Mnangagwa, some will find it impossible to work with such personalities and may choose to exercise their constitutional right not to involve themselves in a political project with such persons.

I completely agree with your thinking that parliamentarians should not be recalled. While legislation allows recall of parliamentarians, gentlemen’s agreements can always be made and allow people elected by the people to continue with the mandate they were elected for by the electorate, but of cause.

It shouldn’t about fixing each other really, and parliamentarians must be allowed to make a choice without the fear to lose the opportunity to represent the people who elected them.

Regarding who has the right to recall, it is unfortunate that the Supreme Court judgement seems to have been misunderstood to mean that the Pro-Congress MDC-T will have the right to recall. Firstly, like Senator Mwonzora, Parliament of Zimbabwe and Justice Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi, Senator Mudzuri made an argument about the MDC Alliance not being a political Party.

Get this right, the only legal requirement for political parties to register in a country globally is entering an election, and the MDC-T and MDC Alliance registered for that purpose, and that is the only occasion that parties are required to register legally.

It will cause international crisis if any court of law rules that a political party accepted to register for an election is not a political party.

The MDC-T and MDC Alliance were accepted as political parties that registered for the 2018 harmonised elections, and as such they are the parties that are known in parliament that can re-call legislators who belonged to them at the time of the elections, the parties which made the decision to allow them to enter the election.

The MDC Alliance that Senator Mwonzora and Senator Mudzuri are trying to use to justify their claim that the MDC Alliance is not a political party is not an expired document, because by their own account, that agreement required each of the parties to elect their own chief whips and form their own parliamentary caucuses, but did they do that?

Do we have separate caucuses in Parliament? Does each of the parties have their own chief whips in Parliament? No they do not, because the agreement ceased to be implement and a new agreement was entered into, which does not necessarily have to be in writing. The law says agreements do not always have to be in writing, and the obtaining situation where the parties that came together to form the MDC Alliance did not form separate caucuses and appoint separate Chief Whips is testimony that they were no longer following the original agreement which had expired.

One interesting aspect is that both the MDC Alliance and MDC-T officials speak glowingly about the late Dr. Richard Tsvangirai, and if they respect him in his death, they should also respect his initiative to bring back together allies who had separated resulting in the MDC-T, MDC and PDP as separate parties.

What Dr. Tsvangirai’s wish was to work together with all the people who helped form the MDC, so it is disrespecting and insulting the dead founding MDC President to accuse Professor Welshman Ncube and Honourable Tendai Biti of any wrong doing.

Not to say that any name calling by officials of the MDC Alliance Party should be celebrated, you guys have to love each other in your differences, and I know sometimes people get emotional and angry.

I cannot wait for the finalisation of the court challenges submitted by the legislators who were wrongly recalled to prove the point I have repeatedly made that the MDC-T has no right to recall MDC Alliance legislators, but I still think that the MDC Alliance must not go on a mission to recall those who chose to go with the MDC-T the same way Dr. Khupe is being quoted in the media saying she wants to recall some more parliamentarians.

One wonders where the love for each other is despite differences in opinion. According to published articles, Dr. Khupe who has made public her stance that she is in politics to make money, is already eying the position of Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, so is it all about money power?

It has become public knowledge that the recall threat is the weapon that is being used by those organising the Extra Ordinary Congress, and I would like to warn those parliamentarians who are warming up to such threats that they may find themselves being recalled by the MDC Alliance once the court process is over.

May I also point it out that it would appear Senator Douglas Mwonzora was the first to write a recall letter to Parliament as his recall letter was received earlier than Honourable Hwende’s recall letter.

There are two possibilities regarding Senator Mwonzora’s recall letter – either he deliberately lied during an interview he granted on camera that there was no intention to recall legislators, and if he lied, what kind of image does that create.

Alternatively, he was saying the truth, but there was connivance with Parliament officials who advised him to backdate his recall letter as a counter measure.

Let me conclude reiterating the point that it is international practice that the only registration requirement for political parties is elections, and the MDC-T and MDC Alliance correctly registered as Parties to contest in the 2018 election, and any independent court of law will respect that.

Furthermore, by the Supreme Court’s own ruling, the 2014 version of the MDC-T stopped making effective decisions at the death of the late Morgan Tsvangirai, and resumed making decisions when the judgement was passed, and can therefore not claim the fruits of things it did not decide on, that will be robbing the legally registered MDC Alliance and MDC-T of the fruits of their labour.