Constitutional Stalemate Could Be Resolved

SW Radio Africa (London)

Tichaona Sibanda

12 May 2011

The stalemate that has thrown the constitutional making process into disarray could be resolved in the next three days, a co-chairman of COPAC said on Thursday.

Douglas Mwonzora, the co-chair representing the MDC-T, told SW Radio Africa that they have now initiated a move to get the impasse created by ZANU PF resolved as early as possible.

‘We are meeting with the COPAC management committee to try and resolve this issue and there is every hope that this can be achieved in the next three days. Meanwhile no work is being done at the thematic committees until this stalemate is resolved,’ Mwonzora said.

SW Radio Africa is reliably informed that both the MDC formations and ZANU PF might end up agreeing to use both the qualitative and quantitative processes to analyse data gathered through the outreach programme. Qualitative is to do with the importance of issues raised at the outreach meetings while quantitative looks at the number of times an issue was raised.

Although COPAC’s management committee resolved at their meeting on 11th April to use the qualitative process, ZANU PF made a u-turn on Monday and insisted on a quantitative route.

ZANU PF is in favour of the quantitative process because more people in rural areas contributed to the outreach program than in urban areas and most villagers in rural areas were forced to give ZANU PF views.

‘The main impasse emanates from the desire by ZANU PF to convert this process into a quantitative process instead of a qualitative one. To that end they want to determine the views of the majority based on the frequency with which an issue was said,’ Mwonzora said.

The Nyanga North MP emphasized that when they designed the methodology they agreed that there would be three meetings per rural ward and one meeting in an urban ward.

‘Now if we use the quantitative method that means therefore we’re going to have more say in rural areas and less contribution from people in the urban areas. That was never the intention of the outreach,’ Mwonzora said.

Turning to accusations by ZANU PF that the MDC-T is deliberately delaying the constitution process in the hope elections will not be held this year, Mwonzora said he wanted to make it categorically clear that ZANU PF was day-dreaming on the issue.

‘It is not the prerogative of ZANU PF, Robert Mugabe or the politburo to determine the date of elections. The GPA is clear on that, as it sets a clear roadmap for elections and the procedure includes the conclusion of a constitution, the security sector reform and the freeing of the airwaves.

‘The deadline for a referendum (September) will obviously be affected by this impasse because of ZANU PF’s intransigency. That party is continuously changing goal posts and they keep introducing things that are fundamentally flawed,’ he said.

The MP added; ‘We blame ZANU PF for any consequential delay but this is to be expected when you are dealing with a dishonest partner like ZANU PF.

‘Let me take this opportunity to advise the nation that the MDC is ready for a free and fair election and the MDC will win a free and fair election. And let me say specifically that Mugabe will lose to Morgan Tsvangirai and there is no question about that,’ Mwonzora added.

He said what ZANU PF was calling for was a ‘war election where they would probably shoot their way to power by butchering people into voting them back into power’.

Meanwhile, COPAC has granted permission to the Zimbabwe Independent Constitution Monitoring Project (a coalition of civic groups) to independently monitor the thematic committee phase of the exercise.

Reports from Harare said the group, which also monitored last year’s outreach meetings, will have 8 observers to shadow the 17 thematic committees.

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