According to the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition’s Dewa Mavhinga, the Zimbabwe Constitution Select Committee (COPAC) has submitted its first draft of the Constitution of Zimbabwe to the Management Committee. This follows the release of several “unofficial” drafts in February and March of this year as part of Zimbabwe’s ongoing Constitution-making process.

Mavhinga writes:

Please find attached the First COPAC Consolidated Constitution Draft which the COPAC team today (30 April 2012) submitted to the Management Committee. There are a number of issues that have not been finalized which the Management Committee is expected to deal with including on citizenship, land, structure of government devolution, number of MPs, among others. Notably, the draft constitution retains an executive president, retains the death penalty, but only for aggravated murder, prohibits gay marriage, abolishes to post of Prime Minister and removes prosecuting power from the Attorney General who becomes only a legal advisor to president while a new National Prosecuting Authority is created.

On the question of gender parity in Parliament the Draft gives with the right hand but takes with the left when it acknowledges 50 – 50 representation but provides that Parliament shall not be rendered unconstitutional by failure to meet the 50 -50.

As civil society we are studying the draft closely with a view in the near future to convene a national civil society all stakeholders conference on the constitution. Earlier today COPAC Co-Chair Douglas Mwonzora of MDC-T addressed Civil Society Leaders at Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Offices where he presented the Draft with a commentary on it.

View the COPAC First Draft

This entry was posted on May 1st, 2012 at 8:21 am by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.