Constitutional Court ruling on bond notes today

The Constitutional Court is today expected to decide the case in which Zimbabwe People First leader Joice Mujuru is challenging the validity of a Presidential decree that introduced bond notes.

Mujuru has hired Constitutional law expert Professor Lovemore Madhuku to argue the matter before the full bench of the apex court.

She is seeking the nullification of the regulations for want of fulfilling the constitutional obligations.

The ZimPF leader also wants an order declaring that President Mugabe, by exercising Parliament's primary law-making power through Statutory Instrument 133 of 2016, failed to fulfil his constitutional obligations to obey certain provisions of the Constitution.

In her papers filed with the court, Mujuru's contention is that President Mugabe has no constitutional authority to make statutory instruments and/or amend Acts of Parliament.

The bond notes, introduced in $2 and $5 denominations and backed by a $200 million African Export Import Bank (Afreximbank) loan facility, are at par with the US dollar.

Government is also expected to gradually roll out the $10 and $20 notes.

All the listed respondents — President Mugabe, Parliament, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya and Attorney-General Advocate Prince Machaya — are strenuously opposing Mujuru's application for lack of merit and want it dismissed with costs.

Last September, the apex court threw out Mujuru's request to nullify the executive decree, saying the challenge was premature and speculative because the disputed currency was not yet in circulation.

Two months later, Mujuru went back to the Constitutional Court to contest the legality of a Presidential decree providing a legal framework for the introduction of the bond notes as legal tender in a fresh case.