PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF party has offered an
olive branch to the Nelson Chamisa-led MDC Alliance by inviting the opposition
party to an interparty dialogue meant to resolve the economic and political
challenges facing the country.
Previously, the interparty dialogue platforms were meant to
work on areas relating to elections between the political parties and selected
leaders from all the parties that have representation in Parliament.
Zanu PF secretary for legal affairs, Munyaradzi Paul
Mangwana, said the ruling party stood ready to engage Chamisa’s party in
dialogue through such a platform, but on condition that he accepts the outcome
of the July 30 harmonised elections.
Chamisa has rejected President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s
victory, but said he is open to dialogue to solve the legitimacy issue
surrounding the elections.
“We are trying to start meetings once Chamisa clears the
confusion in his head,” Mangwana said.
“The confusion relates to accepting parliamentary results
and not accepting Presidential results when elections were happening at the
same time. His Members of Parliament have been sworn in as MPs and taken up
their seats in Parliament and he continues to say he doesn’t recognise the
presidential elections,” Mangwana said.
He said the Constitutional Court had already made a
decision.
“Once he (Chamisa) accepts that the decision of the
Constitutional Court is final, then we will resume the interparty dialogue,” he
said.
“We want to look at issues of mutual concern among
political parties and things that we can work together and see how we can move
our country forward, from the economic front and legislative front, if there
are any laws we feel we must improve, then we negotiate that.”
Mangwana said Zanu PF could not engage Chamisa in the
interparty dialogue when he does not recognise the outcome of the elections.
“We are saying let’s go past that and recognise the outcome
of the elections and then, as the sons and daughters of Zimbabwe, we sit down
and look at the challenges and see how we can resolve them together,” he said.
However, MDC secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora said they
stood ready to dialogue, but would not accept being given conditions by Zanu
PF.
“We are ready for dialogue, but it must not have
conditions. So we totally disagree with Zanu PF when it wants to set conditions
for the dialogue. It must be dialogue without conditions,” he said.
Mwonzora said the interparty dialogue meetings were
fruitful in bringing about the biometric voter registration issue and crafting
the code of conduct for the political parties that was used in the elections.
Newsday
0 comments:
Post a Comment