Zapu has warned against the rejection of the Constitutional Parliamentary Select Committee (Copac)-led draft constitution on impulse.
In a statement released yesterday, the party’s secretary-general Ralph Mguni said a “knee-jerk response to a document that took more than three years to construct, and is intended to address the often cited crisis of governance in Zimbabwe would be inappropriate”.
“There was, of course, the doubt as to whether a select committee drawn out solely of the GNU (government of national unity) parties, with their vested interests in the outcome of the constitution-making process would come up with a document which truly transcended their narrow partisan political interests,” he said.
“The jury is still out over whether the authors truly avoided the lure of writing a document aimed at maximising their own parties’ electability and quest for power and produced instead a constitution to serve the interests of Zimbabwe.”
Mguni said it would be irresponsible for the public to reject the document on the basis that the process was driven by parties in the GNU. He said it was important for the people to be allowed to discuss the draft constitution and urged political parties to respect views submitted by the public.