Therefore, with the tone set by His Excellency the President, it would be prudent that he also takes a cue from such leadership style models both as a ruling party and Government. I would like to suggest that we do away with one person holding multiple positions both in the party and Government as was the old order. No to godfathers and godmothers in the political provinces whose behaviour is characteristic of dictatorial and autocratic leadership styles, favouring their own preferred party structure leaders at every level of the party organs while creating factions and causing disharmony in the party.
We call upon our new President to ensure that political bullies have no space in the ruling party and Government. It should be understood that ZANU PF party’s instability has a potential to destabilise the whole society due to its magnitude as we witnessed in the couple of years due to its factional fights which led to the intervention by ZDF in order to stabilise the country and subsequently the army’s intervention led to His Excellency Mnangagwa’s ascendancy to presidency.
There should be a clear distinction between the party and Government, those appointed as Politburo members should not be Government Ministers as well, as this will ultimately compromise performance as we have experienced time and again with the opposition in the House having to raise the issue of Government Ministers failing to attend Parliament for Wednesday Questions Without Notice Sessions because it is the same day when Politburo members meet. I would advocate for an idea that if one is appointed a Politburo member, the ideal situation should be that such members should be full time working at the party offices with a similar package such as the Government policies which are then implemented by the Government since the party is supreme to Government. China is doing it and South Africa too, for example the Secretary General of ANC, just to mention a few examples.
Meritocracy Guiding Public Officials Appointment
Mindful of His Excellency’s authority to appoint public officials including Ministers, we encourage observation of our Constitution Section 9 (a) which says that appointments to public offices must be made primarily on merit. In the old order, we witnessed public officials being appointed on the basis of nepotism, with the potential to breed corruption in the public institutions and violation of the Constitution. Appointments were done on the basis of how connected one is to the powers that be, regardless of one not having the qualifications for the particular position. Therefore, we applaud our new President for having shown interest to deal with such malfeasances.
Corruption
On the issue of corruption, the President set the tone for zero tolerance to corruption and has already given a 90 day moratorium on those who externalised cash and assets. As Parliament, we definitely applaud such measures to deal with corruption which has had a negative impact on economic growth.
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