SADC Facilitation Urges Full GPA Implementation
Harare, July 21, 2011 – The South African facilitation team is in Harare to
map up final details on the roadmap to elections scheduled to be held next
year.
The facilitators are meeting the country’s political parties to encourage
them to implement the Global Political Agreement (GPA) in full.
A representative of the South African facilitation Lindiwe Zulu confirmed
the meetings to Radio VOP on Wednesday evening.
“We are meeting all the role players and the political parties to engage
them on the need for the full implementation of the GPA. The meetings are a
continuation of our previous meetings,” said Ambassador Lindiwe Zulu who is
President Jacob Zuma’s International Affairs Advisor.
The facilitation team appointed by Zuma to facilitate the Zimbabwean
political dialogue met with representatives of the country’s three political
parties and was expected to meet with the Joint Monitoring and
Implementation Committee (Jomic).
Zuma is the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s mediator on
Zimbabwe.
“The meetings are focusing on the GPA and roadmap discussions. We are also
going to engage other role players whom we think are crucial to the GPA and
the roadmap. These are the human rights commission, the media commission and
the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC),” said Zulu about the closed door
meeting.
The last Sadc summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa directed the country’s
leaders to agree to a roadmap for the country’s next elections and implement
the GPA in full before the next summit of the
regional body to be held in Luanda, Angola next month.
Under a draft election roadmap drawn up by the Zimbabwean parties,
Parliament would need to first pass amendments to the Electoral Act and the
Public Order and Security Act, while the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC)
must clean up the chaotic voters’ roll and the country adopts a new
constitution before polls can take place.
Significant ground has already been covered towards reaching a roadmap
agreement. The have already agreed on the majority of issues. Few but
decisive issues however remain outstanding. Among these is the key question
of security sector reform that the two MDC parties want addressed.
The parties are demanding that the military must not have anything to do
with elections and move out of the country’s villages. More so the parties
want the activities of the CIO to be regulated by an act of parliament.