Maravi

Tsvangirai condemns SADC leaders

COMMENT - 'They're incompetent' - well done, Morgan.

Tsvangirai condemns SADC leaders
Written by Kingsley Kaswende in Harare
Thursday, November 13, 2008 5:58:01 PM

OPPOSITION MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has charged that SADC leaders lacked capacity to confront Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at the recent SADC summit in South Africa.

And the MDC has declined President Mugabe’s reported invitation for it to submit a list of its proposed names of ministers in the inclusive government.

Reacting to the failure by the SADC summit to break the deadlock between the MDC and ZANU-PF over sharing the home affairs portfolio in the proposed inclusive government last Sunday, Tsvangirai said SADC leaders lacked the courage to criticise President Mugabe.

“In our view, a great opportunity has been missed by SADC to bring an end to the Zimbabwean crisis. This omission has occurred because SADC approached this summit without any concrete strategy and did not have the courage and the decency of looking Mr Mugabe in the eyes and telling him that his position was wrong,” Tsvangirai said. “For the record, in [the] meeting it had been agreed that all the Zimbabwean principals would recuse themselves to allow an open and unfettered dialogue to take place amongst the SADC leaders. However, Mr Mugabe refused and the chairman of SADC did not tell him to leave. Thus, Mr Mugabe became a judge in his own case.”

Tsvangirai said there were several issues that the SADC summit failed to resolve, which included the equitability and fairness in the allocation and distribution of all ministerial portfolios, the immediate agreement and legal passage of Constitutional Amendment 19, the constitution and composition of the proposed National Security Council, the equitable allocation of provincial governors and the fraudulent changing of the agreement between its acceptance by the parties on September 11 and the signing of the same on September 15.

The SADC summit resolved that the unity government be formed immediately and that the two parties must co-manage the Ministry of Home Affairs. The ministry controls the police and the registrar general’s office, both crucial in the running of the country’s elections.

While President Mugabe accepted the proposal, Tsvangirai rejected it saying the joint management of the ministry was unworkable.

Before the SADC summit, the MDC had proposed that the key ministries be paired in the order of importance and relative equality to be equally shared.

The party said it had identified 10 key ministries which it believed were supposed to be shared equitably.

For instance, Home Affairs was paired with Defence, Justice with Legal Affairs to Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs, Mines and Minerals Development with Environment and Youth with Women. Therefore, the parties would share one ministry each per pair.

This was after the MDC U-turned on its earlier proposal of co-managing the ministry.

Tsvangirai said the pairing methodology was the most workable one under the circumstances.

“We had proposed a formula which seeks to pair various ministries on the basis of relative parity. Thus, in our view, to the extent that ZANU-PF had allocated itself the portfolios of defence and state security, it only made sense that the Ministry of Home Affairs should go to the MDC,” he said “This methodology was suggested and communicated to the facilitator [former[ South African President Thabo Mbeki] in writing on October 15, to the Troika on the October 27 and to the SADC executive secretary [Thomas Salomao] on October 30. Thus SADC knew fully our position... In a political environment such as ours, poisoned by lack of a paradigm shift by ZANU-PF, lack of sincerity and utter contempt towards the MDC and the wishes of the people, quite clearly the concept of co-ministering cannot work. In any event, what is the rationale of proposing a co-ministry only in relation to the Home Affairs portfolio in total oblivion to Defence and State Security which ZANU-PF already holds?”

Meanwhile, MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said the party would not submit any names for the inclusive government to President Mugabe.

ZANU-PF chief negotiator Patrick Chinamasa on Monday said President Mugabe had invited MDC to submit a list of its ministers.

But Chamisa said he was unaware of the invitation.

“I think that invitation has not come. We cannot be invited to be passengers in a vehicle we are co-driving,” he said.

Chamisa said with SADC’s failure to resolve the impasse, the matter would be referred to the other guarantors of the agreement - the African Union.

“SADC has no final say. There are two guarantors: SADC and the AU. If SADC cannot handle it, we still have other African institutions. In the event we are not satisfied, there is still the AU and the UN,” said Chamisa.

Labels: MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, SADC

posted by MrK @ 5:59 PM