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(HERALD) SCRAMBLE FOR JOMIC: MDC formations, Fishmongers in bid to transform group into donor-funded instrument

SCRAMBLE FOR JOMIC: MDC formations, Fishmongers in bid to transform group into donor-funded instrument
Sunday, 07 August 2011 01:15 Top Stories
By Munyaradzi Huni and Tafadzwa Chiremba

A FRANTIC scramble has erupted among UK, US, EU governments working closely with a group of donors known as the Fishmongers

with assistance from the MDC formations and some elements in the Sadc secretariat along with some officials in President Jacob Zuma’s facilitation team to use the forthcoming annual Sadc summit in Angola to seek the transformation of Jomic into a donor-funded instrument in a bid to influence the results of the impending elections, it has been established.

It is understood that there are clandestine efforts to move away from the current scenario where Jomic is financed by Treasury and make it a donor-driven instrument to influence the forthcoming harmonised general elections beyond the proposed election roadmap signed on April 22 by GPA negotiators.

This bid to hijack and corrupt Jomic comes in the wake of a July 19 meeting of the Fishmongers in Brussels after which they said they “looked forward to an acceleration of the implementation of the GPA and an agreement between all political parties to a roadmap that leads to credible and peaceful elections”, adding that “the appointment of Sadc representatives to the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (Jomic) should strengthen the crucial role of Jomic”.

The Fishmongers is a like-minded grouping of donors named after a Harare restaurant where they meet monthly. The membership of this grouping consists of countries that have imposed illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe in pursuit of illegal regime change such as Britain, the US, Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Japan, whose neutrality is blurred.

The Sunday Mail has learnt from its investigations over the last month that the convenient cover and motive of this scramble is hidden in the belief by the Fishmongers that Jomic can ostensibly increase and enhance its monitoring and implementation capacity as an independent entity outside the GNU if it is decentralised from the national level, where it has operated so far, to provincial, district, ward and village or street levels where “things happen”, especially regarding incidents and allegations of political violence.

The communications manager at Jomic, Joram Nyathi, yesterday said: “The decentralisation of Jomic entails that there will be a district liaison committee at district level where each of the three parties in the GPA second four representatives to constitute the committee.

“There is also going to be Jomic at provincial level. All the parties’ provincial chairpersons will be members of the provincial committee.

“The idea is to deal with violence. People will not have to travel to Harare to report cases of violence.”

Ironically, the scramble for Jomic by the Fishmongers is taking place when the prescribed 24-month lifeline of the inclusive Government under the GPA has, in fact, expired.

Political analysts say this development is explained by two considerations with far-reaching implications on the country’s political landscape and national security.

First, they say there is an apparent attempt by the Fishmongers to use Jomic to create devious political infrastructure for deploying election monitors through the backdoor. Second, and building on this backdoor infrastructure, analysts say there is a determined backdoor attempt to help the MDC formations to match Zanu-PF’s national capacity by enabling them to have an organised nationwide presence at provincial, district, ward, village and street levels through Jomic structures.

Various highly placed diplomatic sources confirmed the analysts’ observation, adding that this scramble has been underpinned by two seemingly different yet supportive recent developments rooted in the initiative of the Fishmongers. One involves the decentralisation of Jomic and the other relating to the pending and controversial secondment of three officials to Jomic to represent the three countries that make up the Sadc Organ Troika whose composition is set to change at the Angola summit where South Africa will have to decide either to assume the chairmanship of the Troika or remain as the facilitator on Zimbabwe since holding both positions would be unprecedented and contrary to principles of natural justice.

With UK, US and EU donor funding, the assistance of the Sadc secretariat and some members of President Zuma’s facilitation team, last month Jomic started setting up what it called, “provincial inter-party liaison committees” in the country’s 10 provinces. These committees are expected to be fully functional by the end of the year.

A July 8 Jomic statement claimed that the committee had “resolved that members of the provincial liaison committees will help in selecting members from the political parties who will form similar sub-committees at district and ward levels”.

This revealing statement, which has gone unexamined when it has far-reaching implications on Zimbabwe’s future, added that “the provincial committees will be expected to co-opt other members from civic society, traditional leaders, farmers’ groups and faith-based organisations, among others”.

Observers say the backdoor inclusion of the heavily donor-funded and driven civil society into Jomic against the backdrop of the proposed secondment of three Sadc officials is designed to open the floodgates for donor manipulation of the Jomic process in violation of the GPA’s Article xxi(22.1) which states that “to ensure full and proper implementation of the letter and spirit of this Agreement, the parties hereby constitute a Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (“Jomic”) to be composed of four senior members from Zanu-PF and four members from each of the two MDC formations. Gender consideration must be taken into account in relation to the composition of Jomic”.

The donor expectation of the Fishmongers is that these political committees, which they say should be composed of people who are empowered to take decisions on behalf of their respective political parties, will cascade through decentralisation from the province to the district to the ward and from there to the village in the rural areas or the street in the urban areas where ordinary people live and where political contest takes place.

Information gathered by The Sunday Mail shows that the real intention behind this decentralisation of Jomic, which is now fully underway, is to create a solid infrastructure on the ground, funded and manipulated by the donor community for election monitoring well in advance of the elections whose date remains locked in what some observers say is needless controversy given the 24-month lifeline of the September 2008 GPA.

Analysts who spoke to this paper say that what this means, in effect, is that the roadmap to Zimbabwe’s elections is being negotiated on several fronts including back channels that are outside GPA negotiations or Sadc processes such as the forthcoming annual summit in Angola.

This startling development whose import is to undermine Zimbabwe’s sovereignty in violation of the country’s Constitution and GPA itself has apparently been triggered by the fact that, under the Sadc-sanctioned SA-led mediation, GPA negotiators from Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations have not been able to agree on the content and timeframe of all the issues outlined in the draft roadmap to Zimbabwe’s election signed by the three parties on April 22 after the ill-fated March 31 Livingstone summit of Sadc’s Troika.

Issue “H” and item “viii” of the April 22 draft roadmap deal with election monitors and provide that there should be the presence of such monitors in Zimbabwe from Sadc and other African countries six months prior to and six months after the elections and “implement Sadc Organ Troika resolutions made in Livingstone on 31st March 2011 in respect of which three Sadc-appointed officers are to be deployed in Zimbabwe to work with Jomic”.

But GPA negotiators are not agreed on this, not least because of the fact that while Zimbabwe has always welcomed election observers it has not accepted election monitors since 1985 given that they can by definition influence the outcome of elections while observers would be there just to observe the process.

Asked to comment on the infiltration of Jomic by donors under the guise of decentralisation, Zanu-PF spokesman Cde Rugare Gumbo said this would not happen.

“We do not see any harm. There has been too much talk at the top yet the grassroots was not represented. Decentralisation will enable people on the ground to air their views,” said Cde Gumbo.

MDC-T spokesperson Mr Douglas Mwonzora said it was important for Jomic to decentralise “so that it becomes accessible. For example, a person in Nyanga does not have to travel to Harare to air their views. The manpower at Jomic is seconded by political parties. I don’t see the infiltration.”

Other observers are arguing that Jomic has outlived its purpose as there is no GPA to monitor and implement, now that the only outstanding issues are the draft new constitution, the referendum on that draft and elections, none of which need to be monitored or implemented by Jomic.

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS (ZIMBABWE), COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, JOMIC, NGOs

posted by MrK @ 6:06 PM