Maravi

Zim kicks off outreach programme

Zim kicks off outreach programme
By Kingsley Kaswende in Harare, Zimbabwe
Sat 26 June 2010, 16:20 CAT

ZIMBABWE has kicked off the outreach programme aimed at collecting people’s views on what Zimbabwe’s new constitution should contain.

The exercise, which has been delayed for months, was launched by President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara last week on Wednesday.

“The outreach programme is to start on Wednesday and runs for 88 days,” co-leader of the parliamentary body overseeing the exercise, Paul Mangwana told journalists in Harare on Monday.

“Police will be moving around with legislators during the outreach programme to monitor the programme and creating a peaceful atmosphere for people to discuss their views peacefully and freely.”

Three of Zimbabwe’s civil society groups said they had deployed monitors across the country to shadow the government-led constitution making process in order to be able to evaluate whether the exercise was democratic and the outcome a true reflection of the people’s wishes.

In a joint statement to the media, the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) stated that they had deployed 420 monitors across the country to check on the teams.

“Our goal is to objectively monitor, observe and report on the work of the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee in order to adjudge how democratic and transparent the constitution-making process is and if it accurately reflects the input of broad and diverse popular participation,” they stated.

They stated that their monitoring teams would systematically gather information during the consultative process, comment on the political environment and any breaches to the Global Political Agreement in relation to the process and to highlight any violations, violence or other discrepancies that occur in the constituencies and wards.

Civil society groups remain skeptical over the government-led constitutional reform exercise, while the national labour and student movements and the outspoken National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) political pressure group have vowed to campaign against the reforms that they say are open to abuse by the country’s three governing parties.

The new constitution, expected by April next year if everything goes according to plan from now on, has been delayed for months partly by a lack of funding.

The drawing up of the new constitution is expected to usher-in democratic elections at the expiry of the transitional inclusive government next year, as part of the provisions of the GPA, which established the coalition government last year.

Both President Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai have said there will be elections next year.
But the process of drawing up the new constitution has been delayed due to a host of factors including funding and squabbles amongst the parties.

The squabbles among parties included that fact that President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF had been insisting on adopting a draft constitution agreed on by the parties three years ago as a framework for the new constitution.

The Kariba draft constitution, as the draft is known, has now been opposed by Tsvangirai’s MDC party despite the party appending its signature to it in September 2007.

Experts say that Kariba draft entrenches the executive powers of the President and leaves President Mugabe's powers intact.

The Kariba draft was produced and signed by ZANU-PF and the MDC in 2007 during talks under the auspices of former South African president Thabo Mbeki.

The public consultation should take about 88 days after which a document will be written and presented to the electorate in a referendum, expected around November 2010.

According to the global political agreement that established the inclusive government, the new constitution was supposed to be ready within 18 months of the formation of the inclusive government.

Labels: CONSTITUTION

posted by MrK @ 1:39 AM