Douglass Mwonzora and Paul Mangwana – two of the three chairmen of a special parliamentary committee leading the constitutional reforms – promised full transparency during the constitution writing exercise and vowed that political parties would not be allowed to impose their ideas on citizens.
Mangwana and Mwonzora are senior members of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T parties respectively. They co-chair the constitutional committee together with Edward Mkhosi from Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara’s MDC-M party.
“We are not going to impose anything on the people,” said Mwonzora, during a training workshop in Harare for Members of Parliament who shall lead various thematic or subcommittees that shall go around the country soliciting the views and ideas of citizens they want included in the new constitution.
Highlighting some of the issues that will be discussed during the public outreach programme Mwonzora said: “The death penalty and the issue of the executive powers -- whether they should be with the president or the prime minister or whether they should be shared between the two are some of the issues likely to come up.”
A new Bill of Rights, judicial independence, press freedom and dual citizenship are other issues also expected to feature prominently during the consultations with citizens many of who say their basic rights have been dangerously eroded by a raft of repressive laws enacted by ZANU PF years before it formed unity government with its former opposition rivals.
Mangwana said: “People should be free to say out their views. There will not be victimisation. We have been assured that people will be protected and can say what they want.”
The proposed new constitution is part of a September 2008 power-sharing deal between Zimbabwe’s three main political parties that gave birth to the country’s coalition government last February.
But some civic society organisations led by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) political pressure group and including the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the Zimbabwe National Students Union have expressed fears that the views of ordinary Zimbabweans are likely to be sidelined in favour of those of the political parties controlling the reform process.
The NCA and its allies – who in 2000 successfully mobilised Zimbabweans to reject a ZANU PF-sponsored draft constitution -- have said they will mount a similar campaign against the coalition government’s draft when it is taken to the electorate in a referendum that should take place later this year.
Rejection of the draft constitution would be disastrous for Mugabe and Tsavangirai’s unity government whose most important task besides reviving the economy is to write a new and democratic constitution to replace the existing one that was drafted by Zimbabwe’s former colonial power, Britain.
If approved by Zimbabweans in the referendum the draft constitution will be taken to Parliament for enactment, with the coalition government expected to call fresh elections once a new constitution is in place.
However, it is not clear whether the government will call new elections immediately after a new constitution is enacted or whether it will wait until expiry of its legal life span in 2013. – ZimOnline.
