MDC Defends MPs' Participation In Pre-budget Seminar In Victoria Falls {Full Text}

The MDC MPs are representatives of the people and during the pre-budget consultation meeting in Victoria Falls, we adequately played the role of true envoys of ordinary Zimbabweans who want key issues reflected in the country’s national budget.

Parliament s a separate arm of government with a key mandate to play an oversight role on the executive It is in line with that mandate that we went to Victoria Falls to articulate the position of the people at a forum that was due to take place anyway, even if we had chosen not to go.

To abscond from such a key national event was to abdicate our responsibility to express the true position of ordinary Zimbabweans, most whom can hardly afford three meals a day. Zimbabweans who voted for us wanted their views to be heard at that forum.

As the MDC parliamentary caucus, we are the servants of the people and at the pre-budget seminar, we raised key issues affecting the ordinary people.

We raised to the government the crisis in the health services sector and the legitimate concerns of the doctors and other medical staff, which concerns must be resolved as a matter of urgency.

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We raised the issues of fuel shortages, the low morale among teachers and other civil servants, the soaring cost of electricity on the few occasions that it is available as well as the proscription of the people’s democratic rights.

Our MPs told the government that the executive would assist its re-engagement efforts internationally if it stopped the callous murders of innocent citizens, the human rights abuses and the abduction and persecution of dissenting voices, real or imagined.

We have remained focused and consistent as the people’s parliamentary caucus. We have stood tall on the side of the people who want us at every step to raise the issue of Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa’s illegitimacy, which has cost us our allowances for several months, putting paid to the false narrative that we are lured by cheap trinkets and luxury.

In the past year, we have turned Parliament into a cogent arena of the people’s struggle. That is why we have effectively used that platform to showcase Mr. Mnangagwa’s illegitimacy, especially after the closure of other democratic spaces for the people to express themselves.

Indeed, we have used Parliament as a theatre of the full expression of the people’s collective conscience.

Our MPs who chair the various portfolio committees have done sterling work in playing Parliament’s oversight role. At the pre-budget consultation forum, we not only articulated the ordinary people’s concerns but our MPs who chair the various Parliamentary Portfolio Committees were brilliant in expressing the expectations of the ordinary Zimbabweans in this year’s national budget.

For the record, we are deployees of the people and we will continue to utilize every available space to express the feelings of ordinary Zimbabweans from Chirundu to Beitbridge and from Plumtree to Kanyemba.

This is exactly what we went to do in Victoria Falls. We are the people’s representatives. We do not why away from any platform to articulate their concerns. We will never abdicate our key national mandate of playing the oversight role on the executive.

Hon. Prosper Chapfiwa Mutseyami
Chief Whip
MDC Parliamentary Caucus