SW Radio Africa
By Lance Guma
9 July 2009
A constitutional conference scheduled to be held this Friday has now been moved to Monday, amid reports of serious bickering within ZANU PF and their last minute bid to have it postponed indefinitely. Newsreel understands several ZANU PF MP’s are complaining that MP’s in the Tsvangirai MDC have ‘hijacked’ the constitution making process. A report in the state owned Herald newspaper quotes some of them claiming that ZANU PF members in the select committee are allowing their MDC colleagues to dominate proceedings. Friday’s convention would have been the first major meeting of all key participants in the constitution making process, but ZANU PF were determined to have it postponed indefinitely we are told.
MP Douglas Mwonzora from the Tsvangirai MDC, Paul Mangwana from ZANU PF and Senator David Coltart from the Mutambara MDC are the chairmen of the special parliamentary committee dealing with the constitution making process. When they met on Tuesday it was reported they had refused to bow down to ZANU PF pressure to move the conference date. What motivated the u-turn is still unclear, but the Zim Online news agency quotes Mwonzora saying ‘having taken into consideration the concerns of ZANU PF and the timeline given in the global political agreement the committee decided to move the conference to Monday.’
ZANU PF is arguing that several issues around logistics and who will attend the convention need to be ironed out. Skeptics believe the move is simply a delaying tactic to frustrate participants in the process. Mwonzora confirmed to journalists that ZANU PF wanted an indefinite postponement of the convention, but his committee refused. After this refusal ZANU PF tried to have the conference moved to the end of July, again Mwonzora’s committee refused to back down, insisting on Monday next week as the date.
‘I don’t understand the strategic importance of a delay. We tried to make sense of it,’ Mwonzora told journalists.
Monday’s convention is expected to see the setting up of committees drawn from all the political parties. To run outreach programmes to get peoples views on the new constitution. But several civil society groups, like the National Constitutional Assembly, are deeply critical of the process saying politicians should not be leading it. Their fears were born out by remarks from Mugabe, who insisted the widely discredited Kariba Draft constitution should be used as a framework for the new constitution. The MDC have already said they will oppose, this despite appending their signature to the Kariba Draft in September 2007. Experts say that draft entrenches the executive powers of the President.