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State security agents disrupt Tsvangirai meeting

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POLICE yesterday disrupted an MDC-T meeting in Mutare shortly after the opposition party’s leader Morgan Tsvangirai had ejected a State security agent who had sneaked into the closed-door meeting.

POLICE yesterday disrupted an MDC-T meeting in Mutare shortly after the opposition party’s leader Morgan Tsvangirai had ejected a State security agent who had sneaked into the closed-door meeting.

BY KENNETH NYANGANI

The drama started early in the morning when Tsvangirai ejected a Police Internal Security Intelligence (Pisi) agent from the provincial meeting 20 minutes after it had started, causing commotion in the room.

MDC-T provincial chairman David Chimhini said officials thought the matter had been settled, but the agent returned with reinforcements and demanded to be in the meeting leading to an impasse.

Chimhini said apart from two police officers who identified themselves, there were many other security agents milling around.

“We requested to see the officer commanding police, but we were made to meet a superintendent, who said his instruction was that the police should attend or you should cancel the meeting,” Chimhini said.

“He said if you were doing it as a province, we would allow you to go on with the meeting, but you are hosting your leader and we will be asked if we knew what was happening by our bosses.’’

However, Chimhini said the meeting was almost over when it was disrupted.

“What I can say is that our meeting was blocked, but we had done our first session in the morning,” he said.

“We agreed that we are not going to do our afternoon session as per instruction by the police.”

MDC-T chief whip Innocent Gonese said the Public Order and Security Act (Posa) did not affect internal party meetings.

He said the opposition party had tirelessly tried to address the issue in the National Assembly, but to no avail.

‘’The law was clearly on our side, we hope in future the police will acquaint themselves with the provisions of the law,” Gonese said.

Before the disruption of the meeting, Tsvangirai briefly stormed out of the venue — Mutare Hall — to chase away hordes of people roaming about outside the building.

But as soon as the meeting was blocked he was whisked away.

Tsvangirai is on a four-day tour of Manicaland and is earmarked to address three district meetings starting with Mutasa today.

MDC-T Manicaland spokesperson Trevor Saruwaka confirmed the three rallies and condemned the disruption of the provincial meeting.

“We did not want aliens and people that do not belong to the party. It is unfortunate we had someone who had entered the building who did not belong to the party and we asked him to excuse us,” he said.

‘’But tomorrow (today) we have a rally in Hauna, Mutasa district, where the president will address thousands of party supporters. Our party is still strong and we have a vision that our president will be telling the people.”

Tsvangirai is tomorrow expected to address another rally in Buhera before ending his tour in Makoni West.