Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said that the ruling ZANU PF is not afraid of participating in by-elections following an indefinite ban on electoral activities by the Ministry of Health and Child care.
Speaking during an interview on Friday with the Daily News on Sunday Senior Staff Writer Blessings Mashaya, Ziyambi argued that Zimbabwe still has a state of public emergency and the government has to concentrate on preserving citizens’ right to life.
Ziyambi argued that it would be unreasonable for Government to spend money on by-elections instead of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. He said:
We are not afraid of elections. We still have a state of public emergency. A right that cannot be taken away, is a right to life.
At the moment we are more concentrating on the preservation of the right to life. The minister of Finance (Mthuli Ncube) has suspended a lot of things to focus on Covid-19 and then the MDC decided to fight during the period of the pandemic…
Nobody anticipated that we would be faced by twin problems of a threat to the right to life and several recalls that would need a lot of money to ensure that those vacancies are filled.
… nobody anticipated that in the middle of a pandemic, where all the resources are being channelled towards fighting that pandemic, a certain party would decide to recall a lot of their people and then say you must find the money for election and forget about the pandemic…