HARARE-CHAOS erupted in Parliament Wednesday afternoon as MPs protested over the failure by the state broadcaster ZBC to air their question and answer session in the national assembly.
Led by MDC-T’s Nelson Chamisa, the legislators took Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa to task, asking why ZBC was not filming live their debates in line with a resolution they passed last year that Parliament should be broadcast live on Wednesday and Thursday.
“We want to know why ZBC cameras are not filming this session when we made a resolution to the effect that parliamentary debates should be broadcast live.
Can the leader of government in the house respond to the question and I see Hon Chinamasa is the one here,” Chamisa said.
Chinamasa, after consulting with parliamentary staff, said the session was live on state radio and had full coverage in the print media which was represented in the press gallery.
“This session is live on radio and, as the honourable member would see for himself, we have a full coverage from the print media there,” he said.
But his response did not satisfy the MPs who insisted on live on TV coverage for the benefit of their constituents whom they said were eager to see for themselves what their representatives were doing in Parliament.
Some MPs stood up to pose supplementary questions on the matter but the deputy speaker, Marble Chinomona, ruled them offside, saying Chinamasa had answered adequately.
However, MPs refused to take it and broke into song and dance, demanding that ZBC go live or else they would be no debate.
It took threats by the speaker to eject some MDC-T MPs to bring sanity in the august house.
On Wednesday’s cabinet ministers are grilled in the national assembly while the Senate has Thursday’s to ask policy questions from the executive
The first hour of the sitting is for MPs to ask questions without notices and it is during this period that most legislators would like to shine on TV.
After calm, the MPs quizzed Chinamasa on what government was doing to revive the economy.
Chinamasa said political parties should work together to revive the economy.
