Our correspondent Simon Muchemwa told us the delays in securing the $1.8 million to complete the exercise have forced COPAC to scale down its operations. This includes the relocation of its secretariat back to their Milton Park offices from the Harare International Conference Centre, where they’ve been based for the last two months.
‘While the thematic committee stage, which was tasked with putting data into respective thematic sections is now complete, there were expectations the exercise would move straight to the next phase.
‘The next stage involves compiling a draft for the new constitution but lack of funds has forced COPAC to ask delegates to check out of their hotels,’ Muchemwa said.
Rapporteurs, researchers and analysts were paid for their services last week Friday but are still owed $500 each. Muchemwa said that in order to avoid accumulating huge bills from hotels while the delegates were virtually doing nothing, COPAC thought it was wise to send them home.
A timetable released by COPAC in January this year envisaged that if all went well the country could go for a referendum in September.
But Muchemwa said; ‘With all these delays, I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that the constitution wont be ready by September or even the end of this year.’
Parties in the Global Political Agreement were hopeful the writing of the constitution would be completed before the end of the year, with elections expected in the first quarter of 2012. However, ZANU PF was pushing for a poll even without the adoption of a new constitution. But this move was crushed by the SADC summit held in Johannesburg on Sunday, at which the parties were urged to hold elections only after the adoption of a new constitution.
Post published in: News