In Zimbabwe, lawsuit filed arguing government statutory instrument unconstitutionally amends constitution

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) have filed an urgent appeal before the High Court on behalf of the Labour, Economists, and African Democrats (LEAD) political party, seeking to declare the government’s efforts to modify the country’s constitution through the use of a Statutory Instrument, unconstitutional. This development comes after the government issued Statutory Instrument (SI) 114 of 2023 on the Statute Law Compilation and Revision (Correction of Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment No. 2. Act 2021) just before the Nomination Court convened on June 21, 2023, to correct an amended Section 268 of the Zimbabwean Constitution. The amended Section 268 of the Constitution stipulates that each province or metropolitan province has a council, and that ten women must be elected to those positions under a proportional representation system, thus excluding men. SI 114 now allows both men and female candidates to be nominated for political party lists. [...] The opposition also pointed out that the Zanu PF-led government enacted SI 114 of 2023 in order to benefit its candidates as the ruling party had ignored the constitutional amendment and utilised the zebra system to nominate male and female candidates for the 10 provincial or metropolitan council seats. Following the publication of SI 114, ZEC published a press release on June 21, 2023 alerting political parties that they can proceed with nominating both female and male candidates for provincial or metropolitan council seats.
Read the full article here: The Zimbabwean