AG’s office bemoans slow pace in re-aligning laws to the Constitution

Clinton Moyo, Sunday News Reporter
THE Attorney-General’s office has bemoaned the lack of a Statutory Instrument to fast-track the process of re-aligning laws to the Constitution after some ministries failed to fully commit to the process.

This comes after President Mugabe during his opening remarks of the fifth and final session of the Eighth Parliament placed emphasis on the need to speed up the re-alignment of laws with the Constitution.

Drawing examples from Kenya, at a Liaison and Coordination Committee retreat at a Bulawayo hotel recently, Attorney-General Advocate Prince Machaya suggested that there might be a need for a Statutory Instrument to be put in place to ensure laws are aligned to the Constitution within a stipulated period.

“I will perhaps refer you to what the Constitution of Kenya said with regard to the subject of alignment of laws to their Constitution when it came into being in 2010. That Constitution set out about 49 pieces of legislation which it said had been enacted by Parliament and in a schedule it set out what those pieces of legislation had to be in Section 261 of the Kenyan Constitution and it gave the periods with in which that legislation had to be in place for instance it said legislation on citizenship had to be in part within one year and legislation on elections also one year,” he said.

He added that the Kenyan government went on to establish an Implementation Commission of the Constitution which was an independent commission and whose sole mandate was to ensure that the legislation in the Constitution required to be put in place was placed within the time periods. He, however, said Zimbabwe does not have such a structure.

“Well, in Zimbabwe there is no structure, actually when the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs put these structures in place what it did was to advice these other line ministries that there is this inter-ministerial committee in place and it invited them in accordance with the Cabinet resolution to participate in the process but they became a permanent sector reserve and never found time to meet unfortunately,” he said.

Adv Machaya said there were about 60 laws that needed to be aligned and expressed hope that the process could be done by March next year. The process of aligning laws into the Constitution was first put under the Cabinet according to Section 110 of the Constitution and was later put under the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs in February 2015 through a Cabinet resolution.