11 October 2008
President Robert Mugabe has made a bid to claim unilaterally key government ministries - including defence, foreign affairs and home affairs - in Zimbabwe's new power-sharing government. But his main opponents have rejected the move as "a giant act of madness."
The Herald newspaper, an organ of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, published a report on Saturday saying that Mugabe had allocated ministries among the three parties which signed the country's recent power-sharing agreement. The newspaper said he had formally published the allocation in Zimbabwe's government gazette. It claimed that only the ministry of finance remained the subject of dispute between the parties.
But the Movement for Democratic Change of Prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai issued a statement saying Mugabe had acted unilaterally overnight on Friday night in a bid to pre-empt the intervention of former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the Southern African Development Community mediator on Zimbabwe. Mbeki is due in Zimbabwe within days.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said Mugabe had gazetted the ministries only hours after parties had referred the logjam over all key ministries to Mbeki. Chamisa called the Herald report's list a "wish list of ministries" which was "a product of unilateral, contemptuous and outrageous machinations by Zanu-PF."
He said Mugabe's move "puts the whole deal into jeopardy. Zanu-PF cannot nocturnally allocate ministries barely hours after the three principals agreed to disagree by referring the matter to the mediator..."
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Please AllAfrica.com The Herald is not a Zanu PF newspaper but a daily that is very independent of the said political party. If you did not know Zanu PF owned newspaper is called The People"s Voice. You should not be party to the MDC propaganda if you want your newspaper to command the requisite respect as a neutral paper. Please do not unilaterally mislead people like that or if you do not have the facts please ask for them
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It has since been revealed that the list of ministries was put up by George Charamba (a.k.a Nathaniel Manheru)of ZANU (PF). The list is not the agreed position but rather the ZANU (PF) negotiating position. Tsvangirai has also unequivocally stated that 'Home Affairs' belongs to MDC and that the deal can break on differences over the allocation of 'Home Affairs'. So if we accept that what was published in the Herald is the correct list we might as well have to accept that the deal is dead as the Herald list shows 'Home Affairs' with ZANU (PF). The MDC -… [Read Full Text]
For your own information the Herald did not publish the list from nowhere, that list was gazetted by the Govt Gazett and so do not blame the Herald. The list in the Govt Gazett is final and that is lawful unless you want to be lawless. ZANU (PF)'s negotiating position is that it wanted al 31 ministries to itself. What this means is that it has compromised immensely to give sellout Tsvangirai 13 ministries. What Mr Boycott has stated is not fact and that is up to the President of the country to decide which ministry goes to which party… [Read Full Text]
You'd think under a GNU that the 4 key ministeries would be shared 2-2. 4-0 is hardly a compromise.
Actually.. I see it is 6 of the key ministries are 6-0 to Mugabe. Hardly a compromise indeed.
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