Staff Reporter
PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his deputy, Arthur Mutambara are set to tackle Media, Information and Publicity Minister, Webster Shamu and Information permanent secretary, Ge-orge Charamba over their failure to amend restrictive media laws as recommended by Parliament. Besides Parliament adopting a motion urging reform, ZANU-PF and negotiators from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formatio-ns have also adopted the same as part of the country's roadmap to a new poll.Last year, media stakeholders also held a meeting in Kariba where they agreed that changes must be effected to media laws.
But Shamu has since branded the proposed reforms as illegal.
While Charamba seems to be contradicting the Information Minister, he added confusion to the matter last month when he informed the Parl-iamentary Portfolio Committee on Me-dia, Information and Communication Technology that his ministry felt it was important to wait for the completion of the constitution-making process, bef-ore amending any media laws.
In the face of the apparent defiance of Parliament, Mutambara told the House of Assembly last week that he ,along with the premier, would pursue the matter with Shamu to ensure that reforms stay on course.
The Deputy Prime Minister was responding to a question by MDC-T Mbizo legislator, Settlement Chikwinya who had queried the government's policy regarding the implementation of resolutions of motions adopted by Parliament.
Chikwinya cited the decision calling for media reforms contained in a motion he raised in June 2009.
The Parliamentary motion urged Shamu to bring the Access to Information and Protection of Public Act for revision or repeal in accordance with the debates of Parliament.
In response, Mutambara said all resolutions, including that on Shamu, would be revisited.
"Consequently the Prime Minister and I commit ourselves to pursue the matter raised by the Hon member, so that the executive immediately acts to operationalise the import of all motions passed in this House," said Mutambara.
"So I want to commit myself to the Hon. member and say that the Prime Minister and ourselves will look into this matter to ensure that whatever motions that are passed in this House and require executive action, we do take action. As a people, we must respect the functional separation of powers between the judiciary, executive and legislature. However, in doing so, the role of Parliament must be respected."
The deputy premier said legislators must not wait for the executive to bring laws as they can also propose legislation through Private Members Bills.
He added that after analysing the three pillars of power, his view was that Parliament is supreme because people have delegated their sovereignty to it through elections.
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