Senior party figures in the Tsvangirai MDC have denied speculation that the life of the current unity government will be extended to 5 years. Party spokesman Nelson Chamisa told Newsreel that the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that forms the basis of the unity deal makes it clear it is a transitional arrangement. (Pictured: Nelson Chamisa)How can you have a transitional arrangement for 5 years, he asked rhetorically. He said the standing resolution of the MDC, based on the GPA and their recent annual congress, was that fresh elections should be held as soon as the constitution making process is completed. The current arrangement is supposed to be our bridge to a new dispensation.
Gorden Moyo, the Minister of State in the Prime Ministers office, was equally dismissive of the speculation on an extension of the governments lifespan. He told a weekly newspaper last week that they were geared up for the holding of by-elections for all the vacant parliamentary and senate seats. There are no intentions to amend the GPA as we are implementing it as it is. We do not believe that the by-elections will be violent and we are putting in guarantees to ensure that any electoral competition will be fair, he said.
Other party officials interviewed off the record said it was their counterparts in ZANU PF and the Mutambara MDC who were pushing for an extension to the life of the unity government to 5 years. Mutambara for example told an investment conference in July that it was a false assumption to say the coalition government was intended for two years. If you look at the Global Political Agreement, there is nowhere where it says the government is for 18 months or two years. It is silent on the duration of the unity government, he argued.
The Deputy Prime Minister went on to say, What we say in the agreement is that, after the new constitution is adopted in a referendum, we will sit down as the three parties and discuss whether to continue or to shut down government and go for elections. When we were doing the negotiations, we were coming from the opposition; we wanted a short and sharp government, 18 months, and then elections. That was our demand. But our brother Mugabe from Zanu-PF was saying, No I was elected on the 27th of June (2008), I want my five years. So we argued back and forth. The reason why we did this in the end is to ensure that people are not in an election mode.
Just this week leaked results of a Mass Public Opinion Institute poll showed support for Robert Mugabe had plummeted by 20 percent since the formation of the unity government in February. The same poll found that Mugabe and his ZANU PF party would be lucky to get 10 percent of the vote if elections were held right away. In comparison Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC party stood to garner 57 percent of the vote, if elections were held. Analysts agree both the Mutambara MDC and ZANU PF have a lot to lose if elections were to be held in the near future. Last years violence has permanently damaged ZANU PFs image, while infighting in the Mutambara MDC has decimated party structures with the creation of two factions.
Post published in: News