President can make on his own initiative. For example, the power to dissolve or prorogue Parliament, if it is to be vested in the Executive at all, should not be given to the President alone. He should have to do so on the recommendation of Cabinet. Parliament should be elected for a fixed term, as in the United States, and should be able to fix its own sitting periods during that term. 2. Ensuring that Cabinet decisions are really made by the Cabinet: The convention mentioned above, whereby Cabinet decisions are conveyed to the President by documents signed by two Ministers, should be scrapped. A transparent procedure should be evolved for transmitting Cabinet’s decisions to the President, and for reporting back to Cabinet how and when the decisions were transmitted to the President and the action he has taken on them. The new constitution should forbid the President from acting without the authority of the full Cabinet. If the Cabinet is to be allowed to delegate its advisory function to any of its individual members, the circumstances in which it may do so should be spelled out in the Constitution and any such delegation should be reported to Parliament. 3. The size of the Cabinet should be limited by the Constitution: It may seem paradoxical to suggest reducing the size of the Cabinet in order to make Executive decisions more collective, but if the Cabinet were reduced to, say, ten members it would be a more efficient decision-making body than Zimbabwe’s present large unwieldy Cabinet. A smaller Cabinet would be able to reach decisions promptly and ensure that its decisions were carried out; in brief, it would be more businesslike. It would not be easy for the President to circumvent such a Cabinet. It would also be less easy for the President to establish a “kitchen cabinet” or “inner cabinet” of a few trusted Ministers and advisers, to make decisions which should properly be made by the full Cabinet. 4. Executive powers should be divided between different people: Rather than vesting all Executive power in one person, even if that person has to act on the advice of a body such as the Cabinet, it would be better to divide Executive powers between, say, a President and a Prime Minister. This, at least nominally, is the position in Zimbabwe under the GPA but the division of powers is so vaguely expressed as to be meaningless (the GPA simply says that both the President and the Prime Minister “exercise executive authority”). Creating two or more centres of Executive power would prevent a concentration of power in the hands of one person. The French Constitution, for example, divides power between the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. There are at least two ways in which this could be done in Zimbabwe: • The President could be given limited powers to be exercised on his or her own initiative, for example the power to dissolve Parliament, call a general election and choose a Prime Minister. The other functions, for example the selection of Ministers and the right to preside over Cabinet meetings, would be conferred on the Prime Minister. • Responsibility for the Defence Forces and the Police could be given to an independent Defence Service Commission and Police Service Commission established by the constitution. 45