CAB3 failed the rationality test — A key aspect of deliberative, parliamentary democracy

The CAB3 debate has reminded us that parliamentary democracy is not only about legislative majorities but also meaning and substance.

Following the 2023 elections, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Zanu-PF expended significant effort and resources to regain the two-thirds majority it had lost through the elections.

This unprecedented reversal of the people’s vote through recalls turned out to be in preparation for the CAB3 — the Bill seeking to amend the constitution and extend the president’s and parliament’s tenure by two years.

In their calculations, the parliamentary debate of the Bill was supposed to be a mere procedure whose main objective was the vote, which partisan maths put in favour of the CAB3 proponents by virtue of their control of the ruling party.

With the whipping system and control of the speakership to their advantage, the CAB3 brigade saw everything figured out.

No wonder the insinuations by its apologists that the Bill was a ‘done deal.’

But the debate has turned out to be something else.

With Zimbabweans watching, this has become the worst indictment of the incumbent’s reasons for wanting to remain in office since 2017 as progressive opposition MPs dismantled every single rationale of the constitutional amendment.

Resoundingly debunked are the Bill’s two main flawed premises: 1) that toxic elections need a term extension, or lengthening as some argument goes, instead of electoral reform, and 2) that completion of national development projects requires extending the term of office of the executive.

Under scrutiny was also the self-dealing and self-centredness promoted by the Bill, in which incumbents are seeking to extend their term of office without popular approval.

A curious detail, even ironic at that, is how the rehearsed arguments of the legislative majority supporting the Bill became drowned by the comprehensive, superior, and detailed arguments of the legislative minority opposing the Bill.

This fact alone is an indictment against whipped majorities that believe the same weak argument in a constitutional debate can be made convincing by mere repetition through the sheer force of numbers.

Whoever came up with CAB3 forgot that Parliamentary democracy is fundamentally deliberative.

While an artificial majority in Parliament will probably have its way, in line with the ‘done deal’ mentality, the people no longer have illusions about the whole fiasco.

The whole CAB3 project has been delegitimised.

Its proponents can no longer hope to manufacture consent around it without appearing conflicted, hence the overheard jibe by one Zanu-PF MP to opposition MPs ‘hamusi imi murikutonga’ (you are not the ones ruling).

CAB3-ists can only fall back on a hollowed-out majoritarianism in a deliberative House.

In this regard, CAB3 proponents must be reminded that the essence of parliamentary democracy is not only about who makes decisions but also about why they are made.

Parliamentary democracy is not only majoritarian, but it is also deliberative and substantive.

Given that the Bill has failed the rationality test, if its proponents want to lean on a majority to pass it — there is only one ultimate majority they must appeal to, which is the people of Zimbabwe in a referendum.

The debate phase of law-making is not a decorative procedure, but an important stage in a parliamentary democracy establishing the social, political, and economic basis of legal instruments.

Any Bill whose fundamental basis has been perforated and defenestrated, such as CAB3, should be abandoned, whether or not there is a legislative majority to vote for it.