Zimbabwe Opposition MPs Suspended from 6 Sittings

All Members of Parliament from Zimbabwe’s main opposition party have been suspended for six parliament sittings and will not receive salaries for the next two months.

Speaker Jacob Mudenda made the call after Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) held protests in parliament, saying 15 of its MPs had been tricked into losing their seats.

On Monday, a man pretending to be CCC’s secretary general wrote a letter to Speaker claiming the 15 MPs were no longer party members.

The party does not have a secretary general and the letter was littered with grammatical errors.

Despite CCC leader Nelson Chamisa asking him to disregard the letter, the Speaker, who is an MP for the ruling Zanu-PF party, declared the 15 seats vacant.

As a result of Mudenda’s decision, CCC MPs disrupted parliamentary proceedings for nearly two hours and riot police were summoned to the chamber.