Should members of the Executive be allowed to sit and vote in the legislature? If the doctrine of separation of powers were to be applied strictly, members of the Executive (i.e. Ministers) should not be members of the legislature and should not be allowed to take part in debates of the legislature. The doctrine cannot be applied so strictly, however, because the executive and legislative branches of government must co-operate to some extent; the executive must have some way of ensuring that its proposals for legislation are presented in the legislature. It is also important for the legislature to be able to question Ministers and hold them to account. Ways of achieving this vary from country to country: • In France, Ministers are not members of the legislature but are entitled to address the Senate and the National Assembly. • In the United States, Cabinet members are not members of Congress, but the Vice-President is a non-voting president of the Senate, and the President is entitled from time to time to address Congress on the state of the nation. • In Britain, all Ministers including the Prime Minister must be members of one or other of the Houses of Parliament and the Executive effectively controls parliamentary business. Zimbabwe largely follows the British model. No one can hold office as a Minister for longer than three months unless he or she is a member of the Senate or the House of Assembly and Ministers are entitled to take part in the debates of both chambers. It is debatable whether the new constitution should change this. It is noteworthy that none of the draft constitutions that have been put forward to replace the present constitution – the Constitutional Commission draft, the NCA draft, the Kariba draft or the Law Society model constitution – seeks to change this position very much. On balance, therefore, the new constitution should probably preserve the current position more or less unchanged: Ministers should be drawn wholly or mainly from members of Parliament, and they should have the right to take part in the debates in either chamber. If this position is unchanged under the new constitution, ways will have to be found of counterbalancing the influence of the executive by enhancing Parliament’s independence (perhaps by making it easier for private members to introduce their own legislation and to alter legislation sponsored by the executive). What should happen if a member of Parliament leaves his or her party? Under the British constitution, members of Parliament are free to “cross the floor”, that is to abandon their party and join another one without having to resign their parliamentary seats. The same applied in Zimbabwe until 1989, when the Constitution was amended to provide that if a member of Parliament leaves the party to which he or she belonged when elected, the party can notify the Speaker or the President of the Senate, as appropriate, that the member no longer represents its interests, and the member then automatically loses his or her seat. There are arguments for and against the current Zimbabwean position: • In Zimbabwe as in most modern democracies, members are elected on the basis that they belong to a particular political party. If one of them subsequently leaves his 51