Constitutional Conference Abandoned Amidst Riotous Scenes

ZANU PF supporters shout, jeer, sing and dance during Speaker of Parliament Lovemore Moyo's Welcoming Speech at the All Stakeholders Conference on the Constitution in Harare a couple of hours ago. The Conference was abandoned as MPs and delegates started walking out

The Inclusive Impediment to People's Hopes, led by Mugabe and Tsvangirai was today forced to abandon the All-Stakeholders Conference in Harare after disruptions by members and supporters of Robert "The Solution" Mugabe.

Lovemore Moyo, the Speaker of Parliament and Chairman of the MDC-T, could not finish his opening remarks as Mugabe's people started insulting him and singing War Songs.

It got so bad that he had to go and sit back down.

Soon after, as the crowd continued to sing and the dance the kongonya dance (a buttock-waving dance peculiar to female ZANU PF supporters), the Speaker and members of the MDCs started walking out.

Mugabe was supposed to have attended, but I did not see him there at all. I think he knew what was happening, regardless.

This effectively kills the process, really.

Mugabe is still insisting, as he did to his Central Committee, that he wants the Kariba Draft as the basis of a new Constitution, with its dictatorial powers and provisions for jailing people who fail to pay their water and electricity bills (or confiscating their property).

Now, since the Prime Minister the President and his party are the solution to Zimbabwe's problems, it would be impossible for him to go ahead with the process without Mugabe and ZANU PF.

We could all see this coming, really. That is why the NCA and ZCTU, by far the two biggest civil society organisations in Zimbabwe, boycotted this joke. Tsvangirai was trying to convince them he will make Mugabe come around, he had faith that Mugabe would see reason and allow all drafts on the table.

There is, as we all know, a new-found faith in Mugabe by the Prime Minister (American Ambassador McGee recently recalled how Tsvangirai also assured him at the beginning of the GNU by saying, "This time Mugabe really is sincere.")

Of course, the fact that Mugabe is stringing the MDC-T along is self-evident, although shockingly denied by some of the most ignorant people I have ever encountered, who insist that Mugabe and Tsvangirai are "sharing power".

Today, Mugabe just revealed where exactly he stands in the quest for a New Zimbabwe.

The PM, as always, will make excuses for Mugabe, brush the whole thing off and take out his scrubbing brush to scrub Mugabe's image clean once again.

This Conference is doomed.

The next referendum will also see the Constitution that will eventually be cooked up by Mugabe and Tsvangirai defeated. The people want change, real change, not capitulation after capitulation.