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(ZIMPAPERS) Livingstone should not be repeated: Pohamba

Livingstone should not be repeated: Pohamba
Sunday, 19 June 2011 00:16 Top Stories
Sunday Mail Reporter

NAMIBIAN President Hifikepunye Pohamba, who is also the chairman of Sadc, has said the procedural irregularities that characterised the controversial Organ Troika Summit on Zimbabwe that was held in Livingstone, Zambia, on March 31 should not be repeated in future.

President Pohamba said this last week at the Extraordinary Sadc Summit on Zimbabwe in Sandton, South Africa, on the sidelines of the tripartite summit on the establishment of the Africa Free Trade Zone intended to bring together Sadc, Comesa and the East African Community (EAC).

The Namibian President’s call for the regional body not to repeat the Livingstone fiasco was made after the facilitator of Zimbabwe’s political dialogue between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations, President Jacob Zuma, had admitted to the Sandton summit that there had been mishaps and lapses in preparation of the Livingstone Organ Troika Summit.

The SA leader said the irregularities were largely caused by the unfortunate fact that only one side, Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T, submitted its one-sided views on the political situation in Zimbabwe with no commentary or submission from other parties.

What made President Pohamba’s call stand out and permeate the spirit of the summit was that it came after Sadc had taken a tough stance against Western-imposed leaders or political parties in the region during its unanticipated long and highly charged debate on the report about the situation in Madagascar that was presented by former Mozambican leader Joaquim Chissano, the Madagascar facilitator.

Some of the recommendations in Cde Chissano’s report on Madagascar were either rejected or amended by the summit in a manner that set the tone for the discussion on Zimbabwe.

In its sensational submission ahead of the Livingstone summit, the MDC-T had falsely claimed that President Mugabe had lost power to an alleged silent coup by unnamed so-called securocrats who are allegedly accountable only to themselves and who are alleged to be waging political violence to intimidate and harass alleged political opponents.

These allegations were resolutely denied by various national and international authorities and have been proven to be cheap political propaganda from the MDC-T and its UK, US and EU handlers designed to misinform, mislead and inflame Sadc in the hope of corrupting elections that are due this year in terms of the GPA.

In presenting his Livingstone report to the Sandton summit which turned out to be a sanitised version without any of the false or controversial elements that had been linked to it by the regime change media soon after the Livingstone summit, President Zuma openly admitted that all had not been well with Livingstone and assured his colleagues that as facilitator “in future I will not go to any summit without first talking to all parties to the GPA and getting their views”.

This welcome assurance by President Zuma prompted the chair of the Sandton summit, President Pohamba, to declare emphatically that “Livingstone must not be repeated because of the undeniable procedural irregularities that surrounded it.”

These irregularities had the effect of making the Livingstone summit a one-sided affair in favour of MDC-T as the only party that had presented unchallenged yet false submissions.
It is against this background that the Sandton summit noted the Livingstone report without taking a position on it one way or the other.

The firm commitment by Sadc not to repeat Livingstone was evident not only in the Sandton summit but also just before it when President Zuma requested a one-on-one with President Mugabe.

The meeting held in Pretoria lasted a good three hours, during which the two leaders held a cordial and mutually respectful discussion which went beyond the controversy of Livingstone by focusing on ways through which SA can support President Mugabe’s recently launched initiative to uplift Bulawayo.

Even more reassuring was President Zuma’s offer to help Zimbabwe to sidestep and overcome the illegal Western-imposed economic sanctions in concrete ways that those familiar with the initiative say are certain to give new impetus to President Mugabe’s anti-sanctions campaign.

Unlike in Livingstone which President Pohamba said should not be repeated, the Sandton summit tackled the sanctions issue head-on.

Ambassador Tuliameni Kalomoh from Namibia tabled a report on Sadc efforts to have the illegal sanctions removed in which he revealed that the US had officially indicated that it will not lift the sanctions because “as The Sunday Mail reported two weeks ago”, the MDC-T repeatedly asked the US to keep and expand the sanctions as the only viable tool to effect illegal regime change in Zimbabwe.

Embarrassed by the official disclosure by Ambassador Kalomoh at the Sandton summit, PM Tsvangirai reacted by claiming that he had previously joined President Mugabe and DPM Professor Arthur Mutambara to publicly call for the “easing” of the sanctions. Mr Tsvangirai said Ambassador Kalomoh’s team should have advised the US government accordingly.

But Ambassador Kalomoh responded by saying that he was merely reporting what the US government had officially said and that it was not his responsibility or that of his team to explain or justify anything on Mr Tsvangirai’s behalf.

The Sunday Mail has since established that the repeated MDC-T communication asking the US to keep and even expand the economic sanctions was coming from the party’s secretary-general, Mr Tendai Biti, who has allegedly been abusing his portfolio as Finance Minister to sabotage the national economy when he is supposed to champion its recovery by campaigning against the illegal economic sanctions.

Last week, Minister Biti refused to sign the national anti-sanctions petition under the spurious claim that it is a Zanu-PF project when everybody knows that the anti-sanctions policy is enshrined in the GPA and guaranteed by Sadc.

With the ghost of Livingstone having been exorcised in Sandton, observers say that the forthcoming annual Sadc summit in Angola will be interesting to watch if Livingstone is indeed never to be repeated.-The Sunday Mail

Labels: HIFIKEPUNYE POHAMBA, SABOTAGE, SADC, SANCTIONS, TENDAI BITI, TREASON, ZDERA

posted by MrK @ 4:16 PM