Reforms body postpones consultations
http://www.zimonline.co.za
by Sebastian Nyamhangambiri Monday 18 January 2010
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s constitutional committee has postponed public consultations on the proposed new constitution to allow an audit of members to ensure that only accredited members will be deployed to record the
views of citizens on the new charter, a top official told ZimOnline on Sunday.
“We discovered that some people had fraudulently been accredited and trained as part of the outreach team,” Douglas Mwonzora, one of the three chairmen of the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee (COPAC) driving the reforms said.
“This was unearthed when they were claiming payments and their names could not be found. As a result we now want to carry out an audit of what happened and have a clean list. This shows how COPAC is efficient since they didn’t access funds.”
Postponement of the exercise to gather the views of citizens on the new constitution is likely to further delay the reforms that have already missed several targets.
Mwonzora, who is a member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party, said COPAC’s management committee – composed of all GPA negotiators and COPAC co-chairmen – would meet on Wednesday to chart the way forward.
“The management committee of COPAC will meet on Wednesday to plan the way forward. We’ll try to ensure that the outreach is balanced in terms of gender, language and political affiliation. Management will give us the
calendar of Parliament since all MPs are in the outreach programme,” he said.
Constitution Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga confirmed the postponement of the deployment of the outreach teams which was supposed to have been done last week.
“Of course they will be a further slight delay, but it’s to ensure that the process of gathering people’s views is transparent and is composed of genuine people and not pretenders. In any case the delay will just be a week
or so,” Matinenga said.
The proposed new constitution is part of the requirements of a September 2008 power-sharing deal between President Robert Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Deputy Premier Arthur Mutambara that gave birth to the Harare coalition government last February.
The new governance charter will pave way for free elections although there is no legal requirement for the unity government to call new polls immediately after a new constitution is in place.
Zimbabweans hope a new constitution will guarantee human rights, strengthen the role of Parliament and curtail the president’s powers, as well as guaranteeing civil, political and media freedoms. The new constitution will replace the current Lancaster House Constitution written in 1979 before independence from Britain. The charter has been amended 19 times since independence in 1980. Critics say the majority of the amendments have been to further entrench Mugabe and ZANU PF’s hold on power. – ZimOnline