Govt has mandate to make policies, review them

Harare (New Ziana) -An elected government has the mandate of the people to make decisions and review them as it sees fit, a cabinet Minister has said.

Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said this in the National Assembly last week while responding to Mutare Central MP Innocent Gonese during the written questions session.

Gonese had asked whether the government consults stakeholders when it comes up with far reaching measures, including when it directed banks to temporarily suspend lending, only to lift the freeze a week later.

The government on May 8 introduced a raft of measures meant to arrest the rapid depreciation of the local currency, including directing banks to suspend loans to individuals and companies.

The Second Republic reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar in 2019, a decade after it had been abandoned in favour of multiple foreign currencies, mainly the United States dollar.

Since its return, the local currency has suffered from speculative tendencies on the parallel market, fueling price increases.

The local unit has fallen from Z$2.5 to the US dollar in 2019 to Z$285 to the greenback now on the interbank market, and trades much weaker on the thriving parallel, at more than Z$400 to the US dollar

“I believe that if you are the executive or if you have been entrusted to make decisions, you do not rush back and consult on a daily basis. The law gives that executive power to those that are in power to do that,” said Ziyambi.

Ziyambi said using its wisdom and the information that it had, the government had found it necessary to come up with the measures.

He said what was important was whether the measures had achieved what they had been intended to, and not the time-frame.

“For that particular moment, that decision was necessary and whatever was needed to be corrected was achieved within the time-frame of a week and then the relevant authorities lifted the suspension,” he said.

On whether President Emmerson Mnangagwa had not gone against his own declaration on his inauguration, that he was a “listening President”, Ziyambi said there was need to understand the import of the statement and to relate it to the architecture of governing on a daily basis.

“If you are a listening President, it does not mean you do not make decisions,” he said.

“The Hon Member is completely lost to infer that because he said I am a listening President, each time he makes a statement he cannot use the authority that is vested in him by virtue of having been elected the President of a country, but he has to go back and consult; he becomes a lame President.”
New Ziana