Maravi

(ZIMPAPERS ZW) MDC-T forced to swallow its pride

MDC-T forced to swallow its pride
Saturday, 22 September 2012 20:52
Kuda Bwititi and Itai Mazire

The full Constitution Select Commit­tee (Copac) has agreed to table its Draft Constitution together with the National Statistical Report before the Second All-Stakeholders’ Conference provisionally set for October 4 to 6 this year. This comes after the MDC-T, which initially attempted to block the tabling of the National Statistical Report, made a U-turn citing logisti­cal concerns.

Zanu-PF, on the other hand, has all along insisted that the National Statis­tical Report should be taken to the confer­ence alongside the draft, argu­ing this would allow stakeholders to compare the draft and public opinion captured during the outreach pro­gramme.

It is understood that Copac is also pushing that the Second Stakeholders’ Conference is not turned into a debat­ing or decision-making platform, but remain just a feedback forum.
In an interview yesterday, Zanu-PF Copac co-chair Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana said all was set for the con­ference after his committee took the decision at a meeting in Harare last Thursday.

He said a sub-committee had already begun organising the confer­ence.
“We agreed as a select committee that we are going to take the Copac Draft and the National Statistical Report to the Second All-Stakehold­ers’ Conference,” he said.

“We also set provisional dates of between 4 and 6 October for the hold­ing of the conference.”

Cde Mangwana said discussions at the conference should be premised on the National Statistical Report, which contains the frequency of views gath­ered during the outreach programme.

He said the proposed amendments made to the document by Zanu-PF in line with the National Statistical Report would be discussed during thematic committees at the confer­ence. He said the report captures the summary of views from all 1200 wards, 56 districts and 10 provinces of the country.

“The amendments made by Zanu-PF will be discussed by thematic com­mittees during the process.

“After this, recommendations will be made to the select committee to enforce the amendments.”

He said the MDC-T was now cor­nered after refusing to sign the National Statistical Report.

“You can only ask yourself why the MDC were attempting to block this report. It is clear that they did not want the views of the people included in the process, but all they want to serve is their own agenda and come up with a party constitution and not a national constitution.
“They are an imperialist party which wants to extend their imperial­istic endeavours into the national body politic, and we will not accept that.”

MDC-T co-chair Mr Douglas Mwonzora admitted that his party had shifted from its earlier stance and agreed to take the National Statistical Report to the conference.

He said the MDC-T did not see the importance of the document because of its sheer size, adding that it would be difficult to use at the cru­cial gather­ing.

He said his party only decided to sup­port its tabling “in the interest of trans­parency”.

“We have agreed that the National Statistical Report will be used as a con­ference document. There will be a full National Statistical Report together with all the other documents that were used for drafting the Constitution. The Report will also be accompanied by an explanation of what the statistics mean and a summary of the statistical data.”

Copac spokesperson and MDC-T secretary for constitutional and par­liamentary affairs Ms Jessie Majome said her party has no objection to the tabling of the Report. She said the MDC-T was just concerned about logistical challenges that would emerge.

“The Statistical Report contains about 10 000 pages, so it will create a challenge for stakeholders to go over such a huge document and this is our only reservation. It is readily available on our website,” she said.

Cde Mangwana, however, laughed off suggestions that the Report was too large to table before conference.

“They are playing all kinds of tricks to confuse the people. We have a sum­marised report that only contains 20 or so pages,” he said.

Chairman of the Zimbabwe Institute of Legal Studies Mr Godwills Masimirembwa said the Report will prove that the Copac Draft is a fraud.

He said some of the sections of the Draft were not in tandem with the National Statis­tical Report.

Among such areas are dual citizen­ship, presidential running mates, func­tions of the Attorney-General and the Judiciary.

“On the issue of dual citizenship, the Statistical Report showed that 10,25 percent said yes to it, while 60 percent said no and the divided opin­ions were 37, 25 percent.

“On the AG, 43,23 percent of the people said the AG should be a legal advisor to Government and 23, 44 per­cent said he or she should be the chief prosecutor. Only 2,05 percent said they want a National Prose­cuting Author­ity.”

Meanwhile, Ms Majome revealed that Copac sparked confusion around the National Statistical Report and the National Report after it misinformed the nation that the National Report would be produced ear­lier.

The document will only be made available after the Second All-Stakehold­ers’ Conference. The National Report is essentially a narra­tion of the outreach pro­gramme.

Labels: COPAC, MDC, TRANSPARANCY

posted by MrK @ 5:14 AM