Zimbabwe must not squander its key constitutional moment

Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa. [AFP]

There is a quiet assumption that has settled into Zimbabwe’s political conversation as the country navigates a constitutional moment that Kenya knows all too well. It is the notion that when citizens do not directly elect a president, democracy is diminished. The criticism of parliamentary presidential elections betrays an assumption that representation is somehow inferior to direct choice. In reality, the idea that when Members of Parliament vote on behalf of the people, the people themselves would have been silenced does not survive the lightest scrutiny.