Zim deal looks dead in the water
IOL
Basildon Peta October 01 2008
Zimbabwe's much-vaunted power-sharing deal seems to be on the rocks,
after Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai again failed to break the
deadlock over the allocation of cabinet ****tfolios.
Tsvangirai and Mugabe met in Harare on Tuesday, after the latter's
return from New York and tried to unravel the stalemate, which their
negotiators had failed to resolve.
Mugabe, upon his arrival in Harare on Monday, had declared there was no
stalemate and that a new cabinet would be appointed by the end of the
week.
Movement for Democratic Change spokesperson Nelson Chamisa confirmed
that Mugabe and Tsvangirai had met but had failed to resolve the
stalemate over the allocation of cabinet ****tfolios.
Chamisa told The Star that the MDC would now appeal to mediator Thabo
Mbeki and the guarantors of Mbeki's mediation, the Southern African
Development Community and the African Union, to intervene and try to
break the impasse.
Chamisa said Mugabe was demanding "to be at the centre and marrow of
the new government".
"We are still poles apart in terms of the allocation of ministries to
achieve legitimate power-sharing," Chamisa said.
Chamisa said Mugabe had demanded control of all key ministries
including Finance, Home Affairs, Defence, Foreign Affairs, Justice,
Information, Mines, Agriculture and Youth Affairs.
"This approach of claiming the marrow of the government while
peripherising the MDC is completely unacceptable," he said.
"The mistake that Zanu-PF is making is to imagine that we are desperate
to be in the government. We are not in a hurry to be chauffeur-driven.
We are a people-driven party."
Chamisa said the arrangement proposed by Mugabe would make the MDC "a
mere cosmetic accessory and mere lipstick" to a government effectively
controlled by Mugabe. "We have said no to his proposals," Chamisa said.
He said many of the social ministries being allocated to the MDC like
Correctional Services, Infrastructure Development and others would
leave the MDC unable to define a new course for Zimbabwe despite its
winning the first round of elections on March 29, which were hailed by
the international community as having been largely credible.
Chamisa said the matter was now in the hands of the mediator, SADC and
the AU.
He emphasised that in view of the enormous suffering of the people of
Zimbabwe, their intervention was acutely urgent.
Tsvangirai earlier this week called for the urgent constitution of an
all-inclusive government to try to begin resolving Zimbabwe's sustained
economic collapse.
This article was originally published on page 5 of The Star on October
01, 2008
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