To most if not all Zimbabweans in the diaspora were 2012 was a bad year. In the July 2012 Copac draft constitution, Zimbabweans learnt they would not be allowed to hold dual citizenship and that any Zimbabwean, except a select few, who are outside the country will not be allowed to vote. These are the two issues Zimbabweans in the diaspora had campaigned to have included in the draft.
MDC’s pathetic attempt to mislead everyone by claiming the draft said something else to please those in the diaspora only rubbed salt in the wound. It was bad enough that MDC had betrayed them by failing to have these issues favorably addressed, it was insulting that party deliberately misread what everyone can see is not in the draft. Sadly Prime Minister Tsvangirai and his MDC friends are at it again; deliberately misleading.
Whilst the PM and his MDC friends have all acknowledged that the Copac draft constitution alone will not deliver the long cherish free and fair elections, free notably of the scourge of violence. They insist the raft of GPA democratic reforms, including security sector and media reforms, will be implemented at some point – when, they do not say - before the elections.
The reality is, none of the reforms are going to be implemented. MDC has had four and half years to get the agreed reforms implemented and failed. It is inconceivable that they will now finalize the Copac, hold the referendum, draft the democratic reforms have them approved by all parties and then implement them; do all this in the six or nine months maximum. Mugabe has already said that there will be no more reforms. If MDC was serious about getting SADC to pressure Mugabe to accept reforms then they should have submitted the proposed reforms years ago.
PM Tsvangirai and everyone in MDC know that the coming elections are NOT going to be free and fair but do none of them have the guts to admit it and thus admit the dysfunctional GNU failed to deliver its single most important task – free and fair elections with results will be a true reflection of the democratic wishes of the people of Zimbabwe.
The average Zimbabwean will neither understand complexities of reforms nor appreciate the time constraints and so they will readily believe MDC that all the reforms will be implement so that the elections will be free and fair. The people will vote YES in the Copac constitution referendum believing the elections to follow will be free and fair. It is up to every Zimbabwean, especially those in the diaspora who having been denying a vote will find they still have a voice, to tell the ordinary Zimbabweans the truth – the GNU failed to deliver free and fair elections.
Since the next elections are NOT going to be free and fair Zimbabwean must vote NO in the referendum and force the implementation of all democratic reform and rewriting of a truly democratic constitution and not the Copas rubbish.
If every Zimbabwean in the diaspora called five Zimbabweans back home and explained why they must vote NO; the NO camp will win the day!
No one in their right mind would concede to play in a game in which the other side uses a loaded dice. Only a fool would risk leg and limb much less a life in such a mad gamble! After 33 years of a corrupt and repressive government Zimbabweans deserve a good and competent government; that we can only have born out of free and fair elections.
Zimbabweans must put their collective foot down and accept nothing short of free and fair elections.
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It is now six months since the original draft Copac constitution was released and the parties to the GNU are still bickering about the final version to be submitted to the referendum. MDC’s Constitutional Affairs minister Eric Matinenga assured the nation the parties will not fail to find a way.
“All parties are in agreement that this process must not be allowed to collapse. Tinonyarirepi (how will we handle the shame) after all we have gone through. I can assure you we will find a way out of this situation,” Matinenga said.
Here is an administration which was tasked in 2008 to implement a number of agreed democratic reforms and to write a new democratic constitution so that Zimbabwe can have free and fair elections whose result will be a true reflection of the democratic will of the people. Four and half years later, not even one of the reforms has been implemented and only the very naive believe any will be implement before the next elections. In four years and at a cost of nearly US$100 million they produced a Copac draft constitution so weak it will not guarantee anything much less the right to free and fair elections.
After all that Matinenga has the audacity to tell Zimbabweans "We won’t fail!" What is he blubbering about; this is a failed and totally dysfunctional GNU that has achieved nothing ever since it was set up.
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