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The constitution and democracy in Zimbabwe: going nowhere slowly
Youth Forum
June 10, 2010

Recent utterances and threats by some legislators to the effect that they will not participate in the outreach phase of the constitution making process unless their daily allowances are increased from US$25 to US$75 per day smacks of rank hypocrisy and utter mercenarism on the part of these legislators. Let us not forget that these are the same legislators who at the height of the cash crunch in 2008 demanded that they be the only ones to withdraw extra cash at the expense of the ordinary citizens. Talk about leaders who are there to serve the people. One is then forced to wonder if these are really the same people whom we all voted for on March 29 2008.

Events on the ground are slowly giving credence to those who are opposed to the notion of politicians leading a crucial process such as the constitutional reform process. Just recently it was the police who came in with their outrageous demand of three million USD for them to cover the outreach process. Before that, there was a bitter argument between the three parties over who should be the rapporteurs for the process. At one point, the process had to be stopped because of financial irregularities. At the very first hurdle which was the First All-stakeholders Conference, pandemonium rocked the event, with police having to be called in to quell the disturbances.

The Youth Forum would like to point out to the legislators in question that constitution-making is not a business venture and neither is it a money-spinning process. We elect Members of Parliament to represent our constituencies and our views in parliament. We are aware that for all the bills that the legislators debate and pass through parliament they are not paid for the service. It is a service that they promise to do voluntarily on our behalf when they solicit for our votes during elections. Their behavior is shocking and affirms the belief that is held by many at the grassroots level that many of our legislators today take the august house as a place of employment where they can enrich themselves. Very few of the legislators have ever set foot in their constituencies to hear the plight of the people in their constituencies since the day election results were announced. Not one of these legislators has been to their constituency to consult the people on what they think should be done with the US$50000 set aside by the Ministry of Finance for constituency development. Whilst we all appreciate the need to survive in these trying times, the legislators' demands are outrageous and ridiculous given the state of our fiscus. Civil servants are having to content with sub-standard allowances which are not even enough to cater for the most basic of needs and are well below the poverty datum line.

We urge the general citizenry who are the voters to take note of the caliber of leadership being exhibited by these legislators. If they cannot put the interests of the country first like what the civil servants have done, then they do not deserve to be in parliament and purporting to represent our interests when the truth is bare for all to see that they are after their own selfish interests.

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