MORGAN TSVANGIRAI . . . main opposition MDC leader
PRETORIA – Zimbabwe’s opposition said a regional summit had failed to address its grievances over a power-sharing deal with President Robert Mugabe, raising fears it could refuse to join a unity government seen as the best way to end the country’s crisis.
Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders resolved after a marathon summit that Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF party and the opposition should form a government of national unity outlined under a September power-sharing agreement.
SADC chairman, South African President Kgalema Motlanthe said the summit agreed that opposition MDC party leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the head of a breakaway faction of the opposition Arthur Mutambara be sworn in as prime minister and deputy prime minister by February 11.
Motlanthe said the Zimbabwean parties had agreed that ZANU PF and the MDC should share control of the home affairs ministry that oversees the police and whose control had been a major obstacle to formation of a unity government.
The arrangement to share control of home affairs as well as allocation of all the other ministries would be reviewed six months after the inauguration of the unity government, the SADC said in a communiqué.
"All the parties expressed confidence in the process and committed to implementing the agreement," Motlanthe, told a press briefing after the summit.
But the MDC in a statement released shortly after Motlanthe spoke just fell short of totally rejecting the outcome of the SADC meeting.
“Quite clearly the conclusions reached as reflected in the communiqué fall far short of our expectations,” the MDC said, adding its decision-making national executive council would meet next Friday to take a final position on the stalled power-sharing agreement with Mugabe.
Insiders expect the council to reject the resolutions of the SADC summit especially because a list of demands the council had wanted resolved before the MDC could sign up to joining the unity government were not addressed.
The MDC said it had hoped the SADC summit would push for equitable allocation of ministries, provincial governorships and other top public posts between the opposition and ZANU PF.
The opposition wanted the summit to push for the enactment of constitutional changes that would give legal effect to the power-sharing agreement while setting out the powers of the president and prime minister in a government of national unity.
The MDC wanted SADC to condemn the arrest and torture of its members in breach of the power-sharing agreement, all issues the regional leaders appear to have skirted during their discussions.
The Zimbabwean opposition also decried the fact that regional leaders had allowed Mugabe to sit in during the closed sessions of the summit that made decisions on the power-sharing dispute, an arrangement it said “unfairly allowed (Mugabe) to be a judge in his own cause.”
Zimbabweans had hoped a power-sharing government would help ease the political situation and allow the country to focus on ending an economic and humanitarian crisis that is seen in acute food shortages, hyperinflation and deepening poverty, amid a cholera epidemic that has killed close to 3 000 people since last August. – ZimOnline
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