by Staff Reporter
HARARE-IT looks like opposition legislators who have been gleefully waiting to jeer Professor Jonathan Moyo would have to wait a little longer as the disgraced former Information minister has not turned up at the august house since his ignominious ejection by President Robert Mugabe from a Cabinet meeting on June 23.
Moyo was unceremoniously asked to leave the Cabinet room at Munhumutapa Building nearly a fortnight ago in a move that took even his Cabinet colleagues by surprise when just before the start of the meeting Mugabe faced the newly sworn in House of Assembly member for Tsholotsho North and reportedly asked him: “You are here, why are you here? Don’t you know that you are no longer a Cabinet minister until we decide to re-appoint you?”. Mugabe reportedly told him that only then would he be required to take a new oath of office as a Member of Parliament being appointed into Cabinet.
Efforts by a thoroughly embarrassed Moyo to reason with the aged ruler yielded nothing and he has to leave the room in ignominy.
Until his victory in the June 10 by-election in Tsholotsho North, Moyo was not an elected legislator, and it is reported that legally his appointment to Cabinet automatically fell off the moment he was sworn as an elected MP, which mean if he were to continue as minister, Mugabe would have to re-appoint him.
Since being booted out of the Cabinet meeting, no official word has come from Mugabe’s office, nor from Moyo himself, who immediately went into hibernation, save for occasional Twitter posts in which he has given no information.
However it is the rude manner in which Mugabe communicated his decision to Moyo that has led to speculation that Moyo would have to pray hard to get back his job.
Parliament sources say since the nasty incident in Cabinet, opposition Movement for Democratic Change legislators have been waiting to rub it in by gleefully repeating Mugabe’s “you are here, why are you here?” jeers at Moyo, have been waiting for him to come to the house but he has since made himself scare. He is understood to have missed all the five sitting that Parly sat on June 24, June 26, June 30, July 1, and July 2.
A raw-tongued Moyo could be skipping Parliament in order to save himself from obvious harassment by opposition members with whom he has traditionally had a cat-and-mouse relationship.
It is not clear what Moyo would do in the event that Mugabe does not re-appoint him to his previous position, or any other Cabinet post.
In 2012 , Newsday.co.zw reported that Tsholotsho MP Jonathan Moyo failed to attend Parliament for 21 consecutive days.
