By law, changes to the new charter should have the consent of the President and must go through parliament, but MDC-T COPAC co-chairman Douglas Mwonzora said the management committee was forced to make transitional provisions in order to clarify the next process regarding the election date.
He insisted there are no changes of substance, accept to clarify when elections must be held and who would announce the dates. He said the committee agreed that the date of the forthcoming elections will be made by consensus and not by President Robert Mugabe alone.
Mwonzora told SW Radio Africa that ZANU PF had been ‘using’ the provisions of the new constitution to say that the elections must be held in June, the last month of the presidential term as stipulated by the new charter.
But the MDC-T official said the timing of the next elections has always been a Global Political Agreement issue, “because there are certain things in terms of the constitution that cannot be done before the 29th June and so we have left the timing of this coming election to the (Lancaster House) constitution that is there and as amended by the GPA.”
The state controlled Herald newspaper described the changes as ‘scandalous’ and designed to pre-empt a High Court application made by Mugabe seeking an extension of the 31 March by-election deadline to 29 June, by which time harmonised elections should have been held. The application was deferred to this week after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai filed an application to be included in the court proceedings. The newspaper said Tsvangirai’s application is seen as an attempt to buy time so that elections can be held by October.
However Mwonzora said the latest changes to the new constitution were made with ZANU PF’s consent, represented by party heavyweights Emmerson Mnangagwa , Nicholas Goche and Paul Mangwana. The MDC was represented by Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, Edward Mkhosi and Moses Mzila Ndlovu, while Mwonzora was joined by Tendai Biti and Eric Matinenga.
“ZANU PF agreed to these changes so that we govern how the next election is going to be dealt with. The rest of the provisions will have to apply after the elections when we have a new president. Obviously we did this so that we don’t upset the arrangements within the GPA. The GPA arrangement is that the President and the Prime Minister must both agree on the date of the next elections.”
While the political parties have said the new constitution was a necessary reform ahead of any new election, the ‘alterations’ appear to be ignoring some of the provisions of the new charter.
For example, the COPAC management committee agreed that for purposes of this election the existing constituency boundaries will be used, although the new constitution stipulates that immediately before any election the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission should do a delimitation exercise.
National Constitutional Assembly chairman Dr Lovemore Madhuku said this is a consequence of the way the constitution was created: “It will never be right to have a constitution detected simply by politicians.”
He said the referendum process requires the authorities to stick to whatever document they put to the people “and any amendments must be done in parliament,” which will be a legitimate way of dealing with the draft.
But Mwonzora said they don’t have to go to the President or parliament because the constitution is not a legal document yet, as it is still with the parliamentary select committee.
“There is nothing wrong in clarifying the law where there is evidence that it will be abused. We had left it to common sense, but we then learnt that this provision was going to be abused by those people who were now saying the provisions must apply to this president – meaning this election must be in June.
“So when we saw the provision was being abused we then sought to clarify this in the transitional provision.” The constitutional bill is expected to be debated in parliament when the house resumes sitting in early May. – SW Radio Africa
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