OUTGOING British ambassador to Zimbabwe, Catriona Laing was
a card-carrying member of Zanu PF, who had no right to the diplomatic title,
opposition MDC Alliance deputy chairperson Tendai Biti has sensationally
claimed.
In a message on microblogging social media platform
Twitter, Biti seemed to celebrate Laing’s departure.
“Catriona Laing has finally left Zim. We wish her luck in
Nigeria. As we welcome the new UK [United Kingdom] Ambassador, we trust that
the British Embassy will once again be the home of the Magna Carta, the home of
reform, fairness & the rule of law, not of tin pots, despots and scarfs,”
he said.
In July, Biti’s party issued an angry statement after Laing
appeared to have “liked” a tweet from a shadowy character who had argued
President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government was giving too much freedom to
Zimbabweans.
“We find Laing’s conduct in the past few years to be
continuously excessive, deliberately offensive, extremely biased and retrogressive.
She is always offside,” Biti said then.
Asked to clarify his statements yesterday, Biti did not
hold back.
“As an individual, she was an absolute disaster and sad
representative of the British government. Treated the average Zimbabwean as a native,
she thought Zimbabwe in 2018 was Southern Rhodesia in 1931. She was an absolute
disaster. She had no right to be called an ambassador,” the former Finance
minister said.
“She was partisan, was a card-carrying member of an
authoritarian regime. She brought British diplomacy into disrepute.”
Laing arrived in Harare in 2014 and her tour of duty was
supposed to end in 2017, but was reportedly extended by a year to “allow her to
finish her project”, including handholding the country through the elections
held in July this year.
Before taking power on the back of a military intervention
last November, Mnangagwa, a former Vice-President and then Finance minister
Patrick Chainamasa, were seen by Whitehall as “reformers” within the Zanu PF
establishment.
The two were at the forefront of Zimbabwe’s re-engagement
process vehemently opposed by former President Robert Mugabe, particularly
reforms that included a cull of the civil service under what is known as the
Lima Plan structured in Peru in October 2015.
The plan centres on Zimbabwe paying $1,8 billion in arrears
to preferred international financial institutions — the International Monetary
Fund, World Bank and African Development Bank (AfDB) to unlock $2 billion in
new funding.
Biti has been leading an opposition international lobby
against the plan. Britain was also accused of supporting the military action
that toppled Mugabe and after the elections in July won controversially by
Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s former colonial master has indicated it is ready to support
the country’s economic reforms. Newsday
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