No deal yet – MDC
Southern African leaders declared Tuesday that the MDC and ZANU PF parties had agreed to form a unity government, but the MDC said that was not the case.
In a communique, nine nations’ leaders and Cabinet ministers from four other countries said a Zimbabwean prime minister — the post opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is to hold — will be sworn in Feb. 11 after Parliament passes a constitutional amendment creating the post. Ministers would be sworn in Feb. 13, the statement from the regional bloc said.
But Nqobizitha Mlilo, a spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change, told The Associated Press that “The MDC has not agreed to go into government of national unity.”
He said his party’s leaders would meet Friday to decide their next step.
South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, chairman of the Southern African Development Community, told reporters that the opposition had agreed to the coalition government.
“They will ensure that (the Constitutional amendment) is executed and they will present themselves” to form a government, he said.
But an MDC statement released soon after said the summit’s conclusions: “As far as the merits are concerned, our expectation was again that SADC would come up with a just resolution to the outstanding issues in the interest of Zimbabwe and all the parties concerned,” the opposition said in a statement. “It was our expectation that the SADC processes would be aboveboard and beyond reproach.”
An MDC statement noted the summit had failed to address concerns including the equitable sharing of Cabinet posts and the abduction and alleged torture of opposition members by government security agents and police.
The summit, however, agreed to Mugabe’s demand that the opposition first enter into government, then resolve outstanding issues.
The leaders also sided with Mugabe in insisting that the rival parties should share the Cabinet portfolio of home affairs — important because it oversees the police accused of kidnapping and brutalizing opposition supporters.
Phandu Skelemani, the foreign minister of Botswana, which has been a lone voice in the region in criticizing Mugabe, said the suggestion of sharing a ministry was “ridiculous.”
Speaking in an interview with SW Radio Africa while the summit was going on, Skelemani said the southern African bloc “is divided because we simply don’t put the people first but rather an individual.”
He said the leaders “feel some kind of obligation toward Mugabe,” though, increasingly, some were speaking out in private.
Posted by Gerald Harper
on January 27, 2009. Filed under Local News.
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