We must work together. Remedies to our problems will come from Zimbabweans ONCE again we continue to plunge forward into unnecessary and avoidable conflict on matters of the State. There is dearth of leadership across the political divide. Just to emphasise the position I re-stated on the 6th of June 2013. “All the problematic implementation issues with the Constitutional Court ruling should be addressed by first committing to complying with the judgment. We should solve these compliance challenges as a collective Team Zimbabwe, not by scoring partisan points against each in period of a potential constitutional crisis. We will certainly not get far by appealing to players external to Zimbabwe, without first respecting ourselves, our nationhood and our own constitutional democracy. Foreigners can only nudge us to talk and find each other. The compliance dialogue should have started on 31st May 2013 among Zimbabweans, across the political divide.” We have now lost two weeks out of the two months we were given by the Constitutional Court. All we have done so far is bicker among ourselves and avoid productive national dialogue. The Principals meeting of the 10th of June 2013 did not take place, because the Prime Minister was not available. We also did not meet as Principals after Cabinet on Tuesday the 11th of June 2013. All this was unfortunate. This is not leadership at all. Zimbabwean citizens deserve better. I explicitly sought to get leaders to talk, with very little success. Now, the proclamation of the election dates has been done without sufficient dialogue. There is enough blame to go around the Zimbabwean political leadership table. This has been a missed opportunity. We could have done a lot to lower the tension in the country and bring our people together. Where did we go wrong? I would have preferred a broader compliance conversation before the action taken by the President. If there was a legal mechanism or possibility of varying the decision of the Constitutional Court, thus extending the election period beyond 31st July 2013, this should have been explored during that collective dialogue. This remedy, if any such possibility existed, could only have come through an all-inclusive, Team Zimbabwe spirit and approach which puts President Mugabe at the center of the initiative. Only through him, as President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, could any avenues been investigated or considered, of varying an uncorrectable final decision from the Constitutional Court, the final arbiter in our land.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:55:05 +0000
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