{{Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is now ruling by decree after parliament\u2019s term expired on Saturday, a minister said Sunday.}}<\/p>\n
President Mugabe set July 31 as the date for presidential, parliamentary and local government elections but was forced to seek a two week extension from the courts by regional leaders.<\/p>\n
The Constitutional Court will on Tuesday hear several applications surrounding the contentious election date.<\/p>\n
Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa told state media that the 89 year-old leader was now the sole authority mandated to make laws if the need arose.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe life of parliament will be terminated by operation of the law,\u201d he said. \u201cIt means that there is no authority with power to make legislation except the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be the situation obtaining until the next president is sworn in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Chinamasa said this was the first time President Mugabe had ruled by decree since coming into power in 1980.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the history of Zimbabwe, we have never had a vacuum that has been so long between the dissolution of parliament and the swearing in of the president,\u201d he said. \u201cNormally parliament is dissolved the midnight before elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
President Mugabe and his coalition government partners have been haggling over election dates.<\/p>\n
Regional organisation Sadc also wants Zimbabwe to implement media, electoral and security sector reforms before the polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is now ruling by decree after parliament\u2019s term expired on Saturday, a minister said Sunday.}} President Mugabe set July 31 as the date for presidential, parliamentary and local government elections but was forced to seek a two week extension from the courts by regional leaders. The Constitutional Court will on Tuesday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-8809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8809"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=8809"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=8809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}