Your article on the possibility of Parliament vetoing the draft constitution (The Standard, August 5-11 2012) refers. Greg Linnington is right on that Parliament has to vote, with a 67% majority to pass the draft constitution into law. Although it would be immoral, either of the two big parties therefore can legally block the outcome of the referendum. Which begs the question: why on earth did we pen a referendum? And why did we ever pretend, this highly technical job could be people-driven? We even want to translate it into vernacular? And for what purpose will this serve? How many Parliamentarians, let alone individual citizens, will read the entire document?
We are good at spending money and time doing relatively useless if not harmful things, hence the massive economic decline since independence. If people are to matter in constitutional amendments, the draft should have sought to get any parliamentary initiated constitutional amendment ratified by the electorate, in a referendum at the next general election. The same should apply to the legislature and the executive’s conditions of service which should be fixed in the constitution and can only be changed after a plebiscite in a general election.
T. Nyandoro
