Bickering stalls constitution-making process

It emerged last week that the process to produce a new constitution for the country is now in serious doubt because of an industrial action by members of the Parliamentary Select Committee, tasked to co-ordinate the exercise.
The members are up in arms with the fiscal authorities over the government’s failure to pay their allowances, slamming brakes on the entire process.
Of the US$4,2 million budgeted for the outreach programmes to do with the constitution making agenda, only US$350 000 has been made available.
Officials claim the balance, in excess of US$3,8 million, was spent at the ill-fated All Stakeholders Constitutional Conference held over two days in Harare in July.
And while a meeting of the Parliamentary Select Committee has been set for today to discuss the hiatus, not much is expected to come out of it since the government is broke.
Short of diverting part of the SDR funds released by the International Monetary Fund recently, the constitution making process appears dead in the water.
While a number of donor agencies are willing to loosen the purse strings in support of the Parliamentary-led process to draw up the new supreme law, the paranoid Zimbabwe go vernment has declared the process a no go area for good Samaritans fearing it would be hijacked by foreign interests.
The strike by the 25-member committee has halted work on the proposed charter, which must be drawn under the terms of the power-sharing agreement that created the unity government in February.
Members of the committee last received their allowances in April and were using personal resources to support the process.
The industrial action means that the committee now has a daunting task ahead, to ensure a new constitution is in place by mid-2010 as outlined in the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed in September 2008.
But even with fat bank balances, there is still a lot that needs to be done by the committee to clear the hurdles along the constitution making process.
ZANU-PF and the MDC factions, for instance, have been singing from different hymn sheets.
The three political parties which are signatories to the GPA are in sharp disagreement over the use of the so-called Kariba Draft as the starting point in putting together the new constitution.
While ZANU-PF and the smaller faction of the MDC have no qualms in using the Kariba Draft — a proposed document agreed on between the parties in 2007 — the MDC-T is flatly opposed to the idea.
The process has also experienced delays in the submission of the lists of chairpersons from the three parties for the 17 thematic committees that will gather information for the constitution making process.
The MDC-T has submitted its list of proposed chairpersons but ZANU-PF factions have been digging their heels in, insisting they want to chair all the thematic committees.
ZANU-PF is therefore still to submit its own list, fueling suspicions that the party is deliberately stalling the constitution making process to give itself more time to reorganise for the next elections after losing its majority in Parliament for the first time since independence in 1980.
ZANU-PF and the MDC-T will each chair seven committees, MDC-M two while a traditional chief would chair the remaining one.
The civic society is still in the dark on the number of people to sit on the thematic committees, further raising concerns that the process might exclude non-governmental organisations.
Analysts this week said the lack of progress in the constitution-making process has vindicated those who were cynical about the sincerity of politicians in handling the exercise.
The civic society, particularly the militant National Constitutional Assembly, has been clamouring for a people-driven constitution arguing that the process would fall victim to sectional interests if left in the hands of self-serving politicians.
“It proves that the whole process is not an honest political process. It was shown from the onset by the disruption of the All Stakeholders Cons-titutional) Conference by political thugs (that the process) would be a disaster if run by the politicians,” said Takura Zhangazha, the national director of the Media Ins-titute of Southern Africa (Zimbabwe Chapter).
“To save the process, it must be taken away from the politicians. The process should be run by non-partisan people. Civil society has all along maintained that leaving the whole process to politicians will be disastrous and I think the civil society is being vindicated. It will be impossible for the envisaged deadlines to be met with all these shenanigans,” he added.
Zhangazha said the process was now dependent on the whims of the three principals to the GPA, namely President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara on whether or not the constitution making process should continue.
He said: “But it is wrong to leave such an important document to just the three political parties. This chaos confirms the fears that have been expressed before.” Barring a miracle, it is now impossible to wrap up the process by mid 2010 as earlier envisaged, said Fambai Ngirande, the spokesperson for the National Association of Non Governmental Organisations (NANGO).
“It seems the politicians see no urgency in having a new constitution soon that will lead to elections within two years,” said Ngirande.
“The abandonment of the process due to the strike coincides, unfortunately, with talk around the extension of the period of the transitional government. The politicians in the GPA don’t seem to see the urgency to facilitate fresh elections.”
The committee’s co-chair, Paul Mangwana, hinted last month that Members of Parliament and Senators were in no hurry to introduce a new constitution because it will cut short their terms of office, which should run for five years.
Mangwana, the MP for Chivi Central, appealed to journalists to avoid linking the constitution making agenda to fresh elections in order to make the politicians buy into the process.
Under the GPA, a draft document should be tabled by at least February 2010, with a referendum to approve it by July the same year, leading to fresh presidential and general elections.
Prime Minister Tsva-ngirai outpolled President Mugabe in the March elections by about 200 000 votes, but failed to garner more than 50 percent of the total votes cast to be declared an outright winner.
A presidential run-off was then called by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, but Tsvangirai boycotted it citing political violence, l-eaving President Mugabe to run the race solo.
But due to  violence, President Mugabe’s victory was subsequently declared a sham, forcing the African Union and the Southern African Development Community — the guarantors of the GPA — to force a government of national unity in Zimbabwe. Under the GPA, brokered by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, a new constitution is one of the major priorities of the hybrid government.
But recent events suggest the parliamentary led process to replace the compromise Lancaster House agreement is under threat due to funding constraints and political bickering. NANGO representatives have been to the European Union with a begging bowl to raise funds for the constitutional making process.  Several potential do-nors were interested in bank-rolling the parliamentary led process but their offers have found no takers, according to Ngirande.