Newsflash - MDC Agrees To Go Into Government

Less than ten minutes ago, I was with Professor Arthur Mutambara when he received the news that the Morgan Tsvagirai formation of the MDC has announced that it will go into government once Amendment no 19 has been passed into parliament.
It is not clear whether they mean the passing of the Bill or the gazetting of same. If they are talking about the passing of the Bill, then that process takes months, unless the MDC-T agrees to throw all rules out of the window, join hands with Mugabe's ZANU PF and immediately pass the bill in parliament. This would break quite a few rules of Houses of Parliament, but it would be worth it for most suffering Zimbabweans.
If they mean the gazetting of the Bill, then we would have to wait at most a week to see Morgan Tsvangirai formally installed and the MDC in the government.
Speaking to Professor Mutambara, it is quite clear that the venom that has been thrown at this man by supporters of the MDC-T especially is misdirected and is done from a position of ignorance. The leader of the MDC-M explains that he went into the SADC meeting fully behind Mr Tsvangirai's position and dismissing Mugabe's claim to the Ministry of Home Affairs as "frivolous and vexatious. We dismissed the allegations of banditry against the MDC-T with the contempt that they deserved. We fought a good fight against a greedy and intransigent ZANU PF regime, but lost at the Summit."
He explained again that there was a clear understanding amongst the three political parties that "we were going to SADC for a firm ruling, some kind of arbitration. This ruling we sought from the regional leaders was meant to be binding on all three protagonists....This is more so because we as Zimbabwean leaders are the ones who went to SADC seeking a ruling. If we had no faith in the SADC system, we should not have gone there with our national matters in the first place."

More importantly, however, Mutambara points out that the parties are not seeking to form a government that will run Zimbabwe 'forever'. Instead, he says, the purpose is to put together a transitional mechanism that will allow for free and fair elections, perhaps in two years time. Added to this is the SADC proviso that the regional body will sit down again in six months to review the progress of the government of national unity. So, should Mugabe prove intransigent, there is still that time in which the two MDCs can compile a dossier from within the corridors of power to present to the SADC heads of state to demonstrate Mugabe's lack of sincerity.
It was an enlightening conversation that will be a subject of a much bigger post from me over the weekend. For now, I thought all the followers of this blog from within and without Zimbabwe would want to know the outcome of this much anticipated meeting of the MDC.

Till later on this weekend.

Denford

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