Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said that the Parliament has no authority to decide when the defence forces could be deployed internally.
Ziyambi was speaking during a lecture on the Constitution at the Zimbabwe Staff College at Josiah Magama Tongogara Barracks (formerly known as KGV1) on Wednesday. He said:
Parliament does not have a role to say yes or no when the defence forces are called upon to help the police inside Zimbabwe.
What is required is for the President to merely inform Parliament that ‘I have deployed the military to assist the police in the maintenance of peace and order in Zimbabwe’ and the reasons why he deployed them.
He added that Parliament can only vote against the deployment of the military outside the country’s borders and the President would be obliged to bring back the troops.
Ziyambi asserted that the military has a constitutional role to defend the country’s security interests and should not be confined to the barracks.