Zimbabwe should not be stampeded into a so-called
Government of national unity or power sharing arrangement because it has a
constitutionally-mandated ruling party that won last year’s elections, a senior
Government official has said.
Zanu-PF party won 145 National Assembly
seats against its main challenger, MDC-Alliance which garnered 63 seats while
President Mnangagwa won the presidential elections by 50,8 percent against
MDC-Alliance’s leader Mr Nelson Chamisa who got 44,3 percent.
But the opposition, with the support of some powerful
Western countries, are pushing for a hybrid government that negates the results
of last year.
Secretary for Information, Publicity and Broadcasting
Services Mr Nick Mangwana, in an editorial published in the weekly Sunday Mail,
said the arrangement would be an affront to the constitution and
the preference of the voting public.
He explained that national dialogue – which President
Mnangagwa is pursuing – should not be confused to a reductionist power-sharing
exercise which the opposition MDC-Alliance is seeking.
“Dialogue should inform political reform, economic reform
and other forms of democratic reform. But we should be very clear that dialogue
is NOT a power-sharing negotiation. That would be undemocratic and against our
constitution. Our constitution legislated for every scenario and event,” said
Mr Mangwana.
“It has no provisions for those who win political mandate
from the people to be forced to surrender that power after a few months under
pressure from foreign powers. It has no provisions where those that have been
elected to negotiate themselves out of that power.”
He said the Government initiated dialogue provided that
Zimbabweans from different political persuasions speak to each other and reason
together in the interest of peace and reconciliation.
“It (The Constitution) doesn’t provide for the subversion
of the will of the people. Dialogue should lead to the enhancement of the
democratisation process. It should lead to political depolarisation and the
bringing of the Zimbabwean people together and the mobilisation of critical
mass behind national interests,” said Mr Mangwana.
He accused the West of double standards by agitating for
GNU yet they were the same people who were on the forefront postulating on the
legitimacy conferred by an election.
“After an election has conferred legitimacy, they then turn
around and say that legitimacy should be now be conferred through negotiations
between winner and loser. Isn’t that the height of perfidiousness?
Why do we have elections in the first place? What is being
asked of Zimbabwe is never asked of any other country in the West. Which
Western country has ever been asked of this?” asked Mr Mangwana.
“In Britain there is a hung parliament. This could be an
ideal case for GNU between Labour and the Conservative. But the mere suggestion
of that would sound so ridiculous that some may ask the suggester to have a
Mental State Examination. In the United States, there is so much bitterness
which goes back to the elections; that’s why there has been this shut down over
the building of the border wall.
But nobody has made a suggestion for the Democrats and the
Republicans to have a GNU. Why then do we get that suggestion whenever there is
some crisis in Africa? Isn’t this the type of attitude which makes African
leaders accuse their Western colleagues of condescension and double standards?”
He described President Mnangagwa as magnanimous after he
did the “unthinkable” within five weeks of coming to power in November 2017, by
visiting an ailing MDC leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s place of residence and
held a face-to-face meeting with him.
President Mnangagwa, said Mr Mangwana, undertook to have Mr
Tsvangirai’s medical bills taken care of including his funeral when he
eventually succumbed to cancer of colon at a hospital in South Africa.
“There was no foreigner involved in this. It was a Zimbabwean
President and a Zimbabwean opposition leader finding each other,” he said. Herald
0 comments:
Post a Comment