SADC demands seat in JOMIC

JOMIC is provided for under the GPA to ensure adherence to the political roadmap that is supposed to lead to a free and fair poll and bring in a democratic dispensation in Zimbabwe.

While it was agreed that the SADC facilitation team should be represented in Jomic in Zambia in 2011, that did not take place. The recommendation for inclusion in JOMIC was made at Saturday’s special SADC summit on Zimbabwe in Maputo, Mozambique.

The summit agreed that members from the facilitation team should not merely receive reports from the parties to the GPA—Zanu (PF), MDC-T and MDC-N—but be more proactively involved.

The summit came hard on the heels of President Robert Mugabe’s unilateral proclamation of the date of the election, following the May 31 Constitutional Court ruling that set July 31 as the deadline for the holding of the election.

President Mugabe had, without consulting cabinet and fellow GPA principals, declared that the poll should be held on July 31, with the nomination court sitting on June 28 and a possible runoff being conducted on 11 September, in the event of no clear presidential race winner.

The president had also caused uproar by invoking temporary presidential powers to pass the Electoral Act.

The SADC summit virtually reversed Mugabe’s decrees, advising that the government, through the Minister of Justice, must return to the Constitutional Court to extend the poll deadline and bring back the Electoral Act to Parliament on Tuesday for debate and adoption.

In addition to SADC representatives sitting in Jomic, SADC also directed that an inter-ministerial committee be established to deal with agreed media reforms and to monitor hate speech.

It was also directed that security forces, whose leaders have in the past declared that they would not salute Morgan Tsvangirai, the current Prime Minister and leader of the mainstream MDC formation, must publicly express their commitment to the rule of law and ensure political impartiality.

SADC ordered the principals to make the necessary amendments to the Public Order and Security Act that the police has used to ban rallies and gatherings, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Broadcasting Act as well as the Criminal (Codification and Reform) Act.

Apparently heeding repeated calls from electoral watchdogs and civic society, SADC directed that observers from the regional bloc must be deployed immediately.