EU Ambassador meets with speaker to express disappointment over alignment of laws to new constitution

Philippe Van Damme, the European Union (EU) head of delegation for Zimbabwe met with Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda to express the EU’s disappointment over the slow pace of aligning laws to the new constitution. Addressing journalists after the meeting, Van Damme said,

I have had the opportunity in the past to express some disappointment about the speed of the movement of some of the things (constitutional alignment) and part of this discussion was of course to see how jointly the parliament, the executive, the ministerial task force on constitutional reforms and the people involved in this process can speed up the process and the discussion was very much inspiring,” said ambassador Van Damme.

I think it extremely important that there is a good working relationship between the executive and parliament on all legislative initiatives because a lot of these reforms involve legislative initiatives and that was part of our discussion to strengthen the interaction between parliament, the executive and civil society and the academia which also bring good ideas on the way forward in terms of how reforms can be implemented including by the way constitutional alignment.

The EU was the major funder of the constitution-making process under the unity government of President Robert Mugabe and two MDC formations.

More: New Zimbabwe

 

Download the Pindula App for a better user experience.