via Angry Mutasa blasts Mudenda – DailyNews Live 6 March 2015
HARARE – An angry Didymus Mutasa yesterday described Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda as a “shameless” person who had imported the “chaos of lawlessness” devouring Zanu PF to the National Assembly.
Mutasa’s savaging of Mudenda came after the Speaker controversially ruled on Tuesday that the former Presidential Affairs minister and his nephew Temba Mliswa’s parliamentary seats for Headlands and Hurungwe West respectively had fallen vacant following their disputed expulsion from Zanu PF.
A fuming Mutasa, Zimbabwe’s first Speaker of Parliament, also told the Daily News yesterday that he would be contesting his “purported expulsion” from the august House at the High Court.
“We have found a lawyer who is taking the matter of my expulsion to court,” he said.
This latest court bid follows yet another one that Mutasa and another liberation war icon Rugare Gumbo filed on Tuesday seeking the High Court to nullify the ruling party’s contested December congress, which they argue was illegal.
Mutasa also insists that he is still Zanu PF’s bona fide secretary for administration, and contemptuously regards the ruling party’s present leadership and politburo as illegal.
He also alleged yesterday that Mudenda, who during the party’s damp squib “elective” congress late last year acted in the liberation struggle pioneer’s position while he was recuperating from an illness in India, was part of the group of Mafikizolos (Johnny-come-latelies) who had hijacked Zanu PF from its revolutionary path.
“He (Mudenda) is one of them and he should have recused himself from presiding over my issue because he is an interested party, dai anga ari munhu kwaye (if he was a good person). But he was singing for his supper and passed that verdict,” Mutasa thundered.
In his Tuesday ruling, Mudenda — a lawyer by profession — said according to Section 129 of the Constitution, “if a member has ceased to belong to the political party of which he or she was member when elected to Parliament, the political party concerned shall write notice to the Speaker or president of the senate declaring that the member has ceased to belong to it”.
Mudenda said although he had also received a letter from Mutasa, arguing that he was not expelled from Zanu PF as the party had not followed due processes, he would not be sucked into intra-party fights.
“I am not going to comment on the matter as it is the responsibility of his party and I can comment on his Parliament status as I am required by law to declare a vacancy in their constituencies after I have received the (Mutasa) letter,” Mudenda said.
But Mutasa yesterday charged that Mudenda was offside and in fact allegedly breaking the very laws he was supposed to be protecting in Parliament.
Referring to the manner in which Mudenda handled Bikita West legislator Munyaradzi Kereke’s issue, the outspoken former minister in the President’s Office said it was worrying that laws were now being manipulated to suit the interests of the illegal Zanu PF.
“The people who are breaking the law in Zanu PF are the same culprits who are breaking the law in Parliament. Mudenda is part of the team and anenge achida kufadza vakuru vake (he is working to please his masters).
“He is just too scared of his handlers and in the process is now breaking the country’s laws,” Mutasa fired.
Alex Magaisa, a constitutional law expert, said Mudenda’s ruling “goes against the precedent that he set last year in a similar matter in which he stated that when there is a dispute over an MP’s membership in his or her political party, he would not pass judgment but would instead defer to the courts to allow them to resolve the case, as he had no such powers of resolving disputes over party membership”.
The United Kingdom-based lawyer said in the case involving the opposition MDC and its splinter entity, the MDC Renewal, when the former wrote declaring that its MPs who formed part of the latter group had ceased to be its members, the Speaker had indicated that he had also received communication contesting this view.
He stated that since there was a dispute, the matter had to be resolved by the courts, and he would have to defer to them.
“Yet however, he has performed an incredible somersault and discovered that he can, in fact, judge whether or not representations by an affected MP have or lack merit.
“In this case, involving his own party and Mutasa, he has taken on the role of judge in regard to the merits of Mutasa’s arguments, presumably against expulsion from Parliament. Quite how he justifies this totally different attitude and approach in this case is not altogether clear at present,” Magaisa said.
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