Mugabe Moving The Goalposts (Again)...

One of the points agreed in the Global Political Agreement was that a new 'people-driven' constitutional would be crafted following various numerous meetings throughout the country in an effort to secure the opinions and submissions by the people of Zimbabwe.

In typical Mugabe fashion, he has now threatened to allow the country to go to elections without the new constitution - to the extent that he will withdraw his party from consultations with the voting public.

mugabe eating cake uPa6K 16744

Mugabe wants his cake and to eat it as well...

"Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe threatened on Saturday to pull out of a process to draft a new constitution, accusing his coalition partners of delays designed to avoid holding elections this year.

Mugabe and his ZANU PF party, forced into a unity government with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) after a disputed election in 2008, is pushing for early presidential and parliamentary elections this year.

The MDC has warned Mugabe to drop his party's plans for an early election, saying it could lead to a bloodbath. Tsvangirai has threatened to boycott the elections if they are called this year.

"We would want to get to elections as soon as possible within the process, but if others are there to drag the process, we will get out of the process," Mugabe told supporters at a party to celebrate his 87th birthday."

Mugabe has effectively isolated and marooned his party as a stand-alone government of Zimbabwe. The MDC won the parliamentary majority, but that has not stopped his party from grabbing the ministerial majority, and his party now fail to even attempt to pretend to attend the cross-party negotiations which are supposedly mediated by South Africa's Jacob Zuma.

Mugabe withdrawing from agreements is nothing new. All we have to do is look how he treated the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979.

Part of that agreement included the land question, and that was supposed to be 'willing buyer - willing seller' and I saw nothing even approaching that with the callous murder of farmers and their workforce. There can be nothing 'willing' when the 'seller' is brutally murdered...

Other agreements that have been ignored are the various BIPPA agreements which supposedly protect foreign investment in the agricultural sector - but Mugabe's people still invade the land, taking it over as their own, only for that land to either be given to a ZANU PF bigwig, or just lies fallow.

"Many Zimbabweans hope the new constitution, replacing one drafted in 1979 before independence from Britain, will strengthen the role of parliament, curtail the president's powers and guarantee civil, political and media reforms.

The process has been slowed by funding problems and squabbles over the composition of committees.

"We would have to have good reason to say those processes are not possible this year and the explanation should be given. We must never accept that money is the problem. Money is not the problem at all," Mugabe said."

Mugabe's party is broke. The country is broke - and he says that no money to assist in funding a new constitution should be accepted.

Where is the logic in that?

Robb WJ Ellis

The Bearded Man