Dis-honourable MPs do nothing but hurl abuse

via Dis-honourable MPs do nothing but hurl abuse | The Zimbabwean 9 July 2014 by Jera

Zimbabwe is a country where the majority live beneath the poverty datum line. Over 300,000 underprivileged children, who would otherwise be out of class, are in school thanks to the Beam project, funded by foreign donors. Electricity and running water are scarce.

Unemployment is high – a shocking 85% according to the World Bank. The lucky few that have jobs often receive their salaries late as employers battle to put together resources. Zimbabwe recently wrote a new constitution. There are approximately 450 laws that are out of sync with the new constitution.

Until the parliamentarians – all 270 of whom received brand new Ford Ranger double cab trucks from the broke government – amend the laws, they remain in place. An outsider would imagine that Zimbabwe’s law makers are working overtime to rectify the situation. But the reality is that our MPs have done nothing but hurl insults at each other in Parliament, since taking oath almost a year ago.

Apart from trading abuse, what the legislators have done is keep the till operators busy in China during a recent group shopping trip. Twenty seven of the MPs – who for some reason travelled in a pack, like children on a school trip – were stuck in China for five days after they missed their flight. Having blown all their money on Chinese trinkets, the MPs could not afford food and accommodation and had to sleep on the airport floor and live on cheap noodles.