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Daggers drawn ahead of indaba

Politics
DAGGERS are out between political parties in the Global Political Agreement (GPA) at the Second All-Stakeholders’ Conference.

DAGGERS are out between political parties in the Global Political Agreement (GPA) at the Second All-Stakeholders’ Conference tomorrow as Zanu PF is itching to push its disputed amended Copac draft against the two MDCs’ position.

Report by Moses Matenga, Staff Reporter

Zanu PF Copac co-chairperson Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana yesterday confirmed his party representatives would present their demands for consideration, without getting into details.

“Zanu PF is a stakeholder and all what Zanu PF wants will come from the delegates to present it and convince others. It’s not part of the official Copac documents, but it’s a document that will be used by Zanu PF delegates and anyone else with new views should use that opportunity,” Mangwana said.

But MDC-T Copac co-chair Douglas Mwonzora said the Zanu PF document was entirely its own material and would not be recognised by Copac. “Their document is not one of the official documents of Copac and it’s not one of the materials for the conference, it’s their document,” Mwonzora said.

The conference begins tomorrow and ends on Tuesday.

MDC spokesperson Nhlanhla Dube wrote on his Facebook wall yesterday that Zanu PF was pressing for devolution to be completely removed from the whole draft constitution and would push for decentralisation.

“They want decentralisation. We all know that you decentralise functions, but you devolve power. Zanu PF wants governors that are appointed without consideration of the election results in that province thus superintending over an electorate who would have rejected their policies,” he said.

“Zanu PF wants to do ways with the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission.  This is totally unacceptable to the MDC.”

The differences among the three parties have set the stage for a potentially explosive conference as civic society organisations (CSOs) petitioned Sadc-appointed facilitator South African President Jacob Zuma, voicing their concerns over limited participation at the indaba.

MDC-T leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Thursday ruled out any changes to the Copac draft that will be presented to the conference.

Meanwhile, CSOs under the banner of the Constitutional Co-ordination Mechanism have resolved to campaign for a “Yes” vote for the Copac draft constitution although they insisted they would not attend as political party representations but independent players.

This came out after a two-day conference attended by Copac co-chairs that ended in Harare yesterday.

“The draft, in its current form, is a progressive document that has more positives than negatives, and can be acceptable in comparison with the Lancaster House Constitution,” the CSOs said.

“The draft is a big improvement because the right to freedom of expression has been explicitly expressed and there are guarantees for media freedom and access to information.”

Mangwana also said: “We are working on a shoestring budget. We also get money from the Ministry of Finance, but we don’t expect to get anything from diamonds and we don’t expect to sell ministers’ cars because we don’t have that power.”

Mwonzora added: “We have fought each other enough. We have accused each other enough. But on Monday we must be together. Let us not promote misunderstandings,” he said. “Let us now look for the way forward. We want to genuinely come up with something that will make people happy.”