ZANU PF Guruve South MP and former Copac Select Committee member Edward Chindori-Chininga yesterday castigated blame-shifting in Zanu PF, saying officials in the constitution-making process were not focused during the Copac outreach programme, but were instead preoccupied with succession politics.
Report by Everson Mushava, Chief Reporter
Chindori-Chininga said instead of blaming each other, the party should focus on the Second All-Stakeholders’ Conference scheduled for next week.
“Zanu PF failed to realise that the constitution is a national document. They wanted to use the constitution to settle personal scores,” Chindori-Chininga said in an interview yesterday.
“The constitution is not about replacing President Robert Mugabe. It is about the future of the country. Zanu PF succession politics brought friction and drove the party off the rails, while MDC-T had good briefings and raised issues of interest to the party.”
Chindori-Chininga’s remarks come at a time finger-pointing threatens to further widen rifts in the faction-ridden party.
The national broadcaster – ZBC- on Tuesday ran a TV programme where panellists accused the party’s co-chair in Copac, Paul Munyaradzi Mangwana, of selling out.
Mangwana hit back saying he consulted the party at every stage and if there was any selling out, the party’s representatives in the Copac management committee, Nicholas Goche and Patrick Chinamasa, were responsible.
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Chindori-Chininga revealed that there was no co-ordination in Zanu PF between the co-chair, the select committee and the management committee. He said the management committee reported to Mugabe and he doubted if they acted without his consent.
“Zanu PF should have seen this coming all along. The co-chair was given too much power and reported to the politburo. There seemed to be a missing link for members to properly brief the party. If there could have been proper briefing, no politburo meetings to rewrite the constitution would have been necessary,” he said.
Chininga said Zanu PF first lost it when it was forced to withdraw the voting system the party was advocating for at the outreach programme stage to ascertain the popularity of views. The situation, Chindori-Chininga said, was made worse by further compromising on the use of the qualitative method.
“There was no popularity contest in the qualitative method. Even the demand to have the national statistical report produced at the conference, good as it is, can only raise debate on the qualitative issues, not popularity of views as reflected by the outreach programme,” he said.
Contrary to speculation that Zanu PF wants to scuttle the whole process, the Guruve South legislator said he was confident Mugabe would want to see the process come to a logical conclusion.
“President Mugabe, with all the years he has ruled this country, would not want to leave the country unguided. He wants a proper constitution to properly guide the generations to come. I don’t think Mugabe has any plans to frustrate the process,” he said.
