ZimOnline
By Lizwe Sebata
27 July 2009
BULAWAYO – A special parliamentary committee leading Zimbabwe’s constitutional reforms wants top officials of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party prosecuted for disrupting a conference to discuss the reforms two weeks ago, one of the committee’s chairmen Douglas Mwonzora said at the weekend.
Mwonzora, from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party, said video evidence compiled by the committee and showing ZANU PF legislators disrupting the conference would be handed over to Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara and to the police.
“We have complied videos and disks which will be used as evidence during the prosecution of the legislators and other people who disrupted the conference . . . the days of lawlessness have to come to an end,” said Mwonzora, addressing a meeting to discuss constitutional reforms in the city of Bulawayo.
It was not immediately clear whether ZANU PF was in agreement with Mwonzora that its members should be prosecuted for disrupting the conference.
The representative of Mugabe’s party on the three-man team chairing the constitutional reform process, Paul Mangwana, was not available for comment on the matter.
David Coltart, the other chairman from Mutambara’s MDC party on the committee was also not available for comment on the matter.
However Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara speaking soon after abandonment of the conference indicated that no action would be taken against those who had caused the conference to flop on its first day.
Some senior ZANU PF officials, war veterans and the party’s militant youth wing broke up the conference on July 13, insisting it could not go ahead unless delegates sang the national anthem first.
The conference only resumed the next day after Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara spoke strongly against the mobs that had disrupted the first day of the meeting that had been called to map out the course of constitutional reforms.
Zimbabwe is on a programme to write a new constitution that should lead to the holding of free and fair elections in about 24 months.
Zimbabweans hope a new constitution will guarantee human rights, strengthen the role of Parliament and curtail the president’s powers, as well as guaranteeing civil, political and media freedoms.
The new constitution will replace the current Lancaster House Constitution written in 1979 before independence from Britain. The charter has been amended 19 times since independence in 1980.
Critics say the majority of the amendments have been to further entrench Mugabe and ZANU PF’s hold on power.