How constitutional is MDC-Ts National Council’s decision to remove clause 6.1.3 from the MDCs Constitution which states that the president shall serve for a maximum of two five year terms, in order to keep Mr. Tsvangirai in his position as President?

In a series of articles published in Newsday, the Standard and the Independent, Nelson Chamisa, MDCT Spokesperson boldly proclaims “We are the apostles of constitutionalism and disciples and doyens of democracy”.

Any proclamation spoken by politicians should be treated with suspicion, particularly if it is salted with religious reference. Mr. Chamisa goes on to ignorantly defend the National Council’s decision by saying that the two terms only counted when the MDC President also became President of the country.

The MDC Constitution, available for download from their website, states in article 3 titled Aims Values And Objects:

The MDC shall be a Social Democratic Party whose core values shall be solidarity, justice, equality, liberty, freedom, transparency, humble and obedient leadership and accountability. And it goes on further to say:
(b) An open democracy, in which national government is accountable to the people through the devolution of power and decision-making to the provinces and local institutions and structures.

The same document also states that amendments to the MDC constitution are to be carried out by a two-thirds majority of the Congress, not the National Council. I’m no legal expert but the actions of the National Council don’t seem very constitutional to me.

By what standard are we to measure Mr. Tsvangirai and MDC-T itself if even they cannot uphold their own party’s constitution? How are we to believe that they won’t at the first opportunity amend a national constitution to hold onto power?

Of course the major argument proffered will be (in former US Ambassador Christopher Dells words) that Mr. Tsvangirai is the only player on the scene right now with real star quality and the ability to rally the masses. But this does not exempt him from being accountable to the people he wishes to represent. If he is to remain president and the MDC constitution is to be amended then let him state his case at the congress in front of the people, not in front of a hand picked group of cronies and yes men who’s interest lie in maintaining the little power they’ve managed to wrangle from ZANU PF.

Elections are coming and Zimbabwe is watching. Nothing Mr. Mugabe does or says surprises anyone, but Mr. Tsvangirai is quickly becoming the devil no one knows about.

Like Chief Nanga in Chinua Achebe’s ‘A Man of the People’, today’s politicians in Zimbabwe ‘preach one thing and practice another’, writes Levi Kabwato.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights launched a report today titled Zimbabwe: Geared up for another election. The report is a follow up to another ZHLR report titled Will there be free and fair elections?

ZLHR’s objective in conducting the study that culminated in this report was to assess the 2008 election and the possibility of future elections in Zimbabwe. The report uses the SADC Principles and guidelines to Democratic elections as a yardstick to measure the level of compliance of Zimbabwe’s electoral framework and its adherence to norms and standards, which the SADC community has recognised as minimum requirements to ensure democratic elections.

In the report, ZLHR notes that the Lancaster House Constitution, amended 18 times before the 2008 elections, does not protect fundamental rights and freedoms; nor does it establish independent institutions that are accountable, transparent and independent.

At the signing of the Global Political Agreement and the formation of the Inclusive government the generality of Zimbabweans were hopeful that this was the beginning of a journey towards a democratic dispensation. Crucial to the creation of that democracy was a new constitution. However, the report noted that people were unable to participate freely in the constitution-making process because of the continued existence of repressive legislation. Private media was suffocated and the public media was under the control of retrogressive forces. Selective application of the law targeting human rights defenders, and perceived and real supporters of the MDC is still rampant, and institutions of justice delivery remained unreformed. Two years after elections and the singing of the GPA, cases of political violence continue to be documented, and the polarisation of society that marred the 2008 Election has not been addressed.

In his presentation at the launch, ZLHR member, Alec Muchadehama reflected on the 2008 elections. He noted that the 2008 elections had been characterised by extreme violence; electoral fraud and malpractice; the denial of freedoms of expression and assembly; bribery and corruption; and murder. He also chronicled the trials he endured as a lawyer defending human rights, including the illegal opening of ballot boxes, gerrymandering and the restriction of public access to the voters roll by ZANU PF. Mr. Muchadehama noted that Zimbabwe, during that election was a “classical example of how not to [conduct elections]“.

Even when the GNU was inked in 2008, progressive, cerebral and visceral analysts – and even pseudo-intellectuals – greeted the marriage of inconvenience with the same cynicism that Zanu PF game planners are considering the outcome of what many see as this rushed election.

Reasonable men and women wondered how Zanu PF- a nationalist and rightwing party – could capitulate to any demands placed on the table by the MDC, and this based on previous pronouncements that they did not see any reason why in their opinion people with no liberation war credentials could be allowed to rule the country. And now we have Khaya Moyo and Chihuri speaking the language of Chinotimba we pretend to be surprised, only because another election is looming despite popular opinion that this will be the death of us as the conditions for a credible elections are palpably absent.

In this newest discourse on the future of the country, the issue then becomes what has to be done to have a consensus that the country can go head and have elections, not to mention the referendum. Based on what we already know about the Zanu PF collective and the congenital and abysmal attitude to democracy and the people’s right too choose a government of their own, it would be safe to say that what has been missing in this crisis is outside leverage to make Mugabe bend.  Yet we also already know Mugabe’s attitude toward outsiders “interfering”  in the internal affairs of “his” country.

What choices then do Zimbabweans have on the face of these apparently intractable contradictions as defined for the whole nation by Mugabe and Zanu PF? You get Jonathan Moyo saying the MDC will never win an election, and you have to ask what informs such careless statements: who is voting, the people of Zimbabwe or Zanu PF? Obviously Zanu PF will never vote for the MDC, and in an election where only Zanu PF elements vote, you can guarantee an MDT thrashing – much like the June presidential run-off farce – but for God’s sake it does not work that way and you somewhat understand why Zanu PF would insist on having these elections, because they figure there wont be any MDC supporters to vote thanks to the patriotic efforts of Jabulani Sibanda and Chinotimba!

But then it has to be asked for how long Mugabe and Zanu PF are going to ride roughshod over the wishes not only of Zimbabweans but standards set by the international community which has – albeit feebly – tried to steer this country to placid waters? Imagine the progeny of Zanu PF hawks embracing the same militancy half a century after Zimbabwe’s independence and telling us that no one without liberation war credentials is fit to rule! You then understand the belligerency Africa has seen in its many troubled spots where obdurate nationalists and despots are responded to by matching militancy from frustrated opponents who decided the ballot was just but a fart in the wind as far as the nationalist despots were concerned.

Another thing that has brought the rather unnecessary stretching of this crisis, some contend, is the mediation by SADC and how useless the whole exercise has been since the Mbeki years. International relations and diplomacy efforts only work when local parties involved in negotiations see themselves as equals, after all this is what has brought to an end some of the continent’s most atrocious human crises. Zimbabwe however offers an example that negotiations can drag for centuries as long as one party to the negotiations obsesses about entitlement to political power despite the good intentions of mediators to make repair the limping country.

Meanwhile, with this insistence on elections by Zanu PF, we do not have to brace ourselves that the victory Zanu PF is already claiming will be disputed: we already know that the mediators will persuade the MDC to accept a Zanu PF victory while those who voted for change and the international community who question the outcome will be told once again to go to hell. And where does that leave the ordinary man, woman and child? Well, just blame the MDC for not being tough enough on Mugabe and Zanu PF, yet you still have to empathise with those so-called MDC hardliners who were – and still are – against this marriage that has inconvenienced us all when we could be using our brains to understand better things other than how Zanu PF the party Simon Khaya Moyo so much extols lost the bush war plot, how this neo-patrimonialism crap came to make supposedly good man bad.

I saw and wept the other day at the response to Gabon’s run-off election where results were torn in front of television cameras by an official from the party that was sensing sure defeat, and you understand Zanu PF’s thesis that they will never accept an electoral outcome that does not favour them as a culture from the Dark Ages where the rule and the will of the people has no place in their definition of self-rule and self-determination. The question obviously becomes, why hold elections if you are not going to accept the results? Chinotimba answered that already in a Newsday interview:

That’s how we do things in Zanu PF!

The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) cordially invites you to attend  a public debate on the topic “Prisoners right to health in Zimbabwe challenges and opportunities”

The public meeting will be held at the Book Cafe on the 30th of November 2010.

The meeting will start at 1730hrs through to 1900hrs.