A fresh fight has erupted in the constitution-making process amid revelations Zanu PF is pushing for the removal of the constitutional court, devolution while seeking the retention of absolute power for the President in the new charter.
The party proposed that the constitutional court should instead be replaced by a division in the Supreme Court.
In its 29-page proposals on the draft of the new governance charter to Copac, Zanu PF is also seeking to retain two Vice-Presidents allegedly to balance its ethnic politics.
Zanu PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo confirmed yesterday the party had made new proposals to the Copac draft and that the two MDCs were against their draft.
Gumbo, however, referred questions to the party Copac co-chairperson Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana.
The best person to answer that is Mangwana, but my understanding is that the MDCs were not pleased with the document, Gumbo said.
Mangwanas phone went unanswered when NewsDay sought a comment, but MDC Copac co-chairperson Edward Mkhosi said the issues would be tackled at todays management meeting.
MDC-T spokesperson and Copac co-chairperson Douglas Mwonzora said they were not happy with the Zanu PF proposals which include giving the President complete power to deploy troops in and out of Zimbabwe without Parliaments approval.
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We are not happy that Zanu PF wants to remove a constitutional court, they want to remove devolution and want the President to appoint commissions.
They dont want the key appointments to be approved by Parliament and they also dont want the Presidents power to deploy troops within and without Zimbabwe to be approved by Parliament, Mwonzora said.
He said Zanu PF also wanted to exclude certain freedom fighters from the preamble and preferred one Vice-President instead of two.
We understand that the matter (on the constitution) was discussed in Cabinet and the management committee will meet next week to go through the draft. The MDC position is that we dont want to go back to things that we agreed to and finalised, Mwonzora said.
Zanu PF also proposed that the President should take precedence over all other persons in Zimbabwe.
The Cabinet should be deleted because the President is directly elected. 6.2 (2) to add new clause President takes precedence over all other persons in Zimbabwe, reads the Zanu PF proposal.
The party also wants to maintain the 50% plus one concept, which is currently in the Electoral Act and proposed it should be incorporated into the new constitution.
On the post of Attorney-General, Zanu PF proposed that s/he retains prosecuting powers, but should not sit in Cabinet and Parliament.
In Parliament, Zanu PF is proposing to have 92 Senate seats and 280 seats in the Lower House with 210 first pass the post and 70 reserved for women.
The proposal by Zanu PF seeks to transfer the powers of the Speaker of Parliament to the Senate President.
On chiefs, Zanu PF said they should vote in Parliament.
