Constitutional outreach teams cut

Committee co-chairperson Paul Mangwana said that the outreach teams to gather peoples views and ideas they wanted included in the new constitution were being reduced after the three principals to the countrys power sharing agreement President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara deemed them too big and expensive to fund.

We are also rationalising the outreach teams from 860 people to around 600 after the principals to the GPA said the outreach teams were huge and expensive to fund. The outreach teams have been reduced because of budgetary constraints, said Mangwana.

Mangwana also said the committee is setting up a secretariat to make it independent from the Parliament that initially was supposed to have overall control of the constitutional reform process.

We are in the process of setting up an independent secretariat since we have been weaned away from Parliament, he said.

Under last years power-sharing deal between Mugabes Zanu (PF) party and the MDC factions led by Tsvangirai and Mutambara, the country is supposed to have a new constitution in the next two years to pave way for new elections.

The draft constitution will be put before the electorate in a referendum expected in July next year and if approved by Zimbabweans will then be brought before Parliament for enactment.

Once a new constitution is in place, the power-sharing government is expected to call fresh parliamentary, presidential and local government elections.

But funding constraints and quarreling over how to proceed with the making of a new constitution are derailing the efforts of the parliamentary committee leading the process to create the countrys first post-independence constitution.

Differences between the coalition partners over the direction reforms should take have also held back the constitutional reform process.

Zanu (PF) has said any new constitution should be based on the Kariba draft that was secretly authored by the countrys three main political parties without citizens participation.

However, civic organisations and the MDC are opposed to the Kariba draft, saying the document leaves largely untouched the wide-sweeping powers that Mugabe continues to enjoy even after formation of a power-sharing government with Tsvangirai and Mutambara.

Failure to enact a new and democratic constitution would be disastrous for the coalition government whose most important task, besides reviving the economy, is to write a new constitution to replace the existing one that was drafted in 1979 by Zimbabwes former colonial power, Britain, with some input from former liberation movements and has been amended a record 19 times.

Many analysts trace Zimbabwes governance crisis to the independence constitution that was written more as a ceasefire document between nationalist guerillas and the white colonial government rather than a charter for good governance and democracy.