Sources in Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party say hardliners want Mr. Mugabe to tell peers in the Southern African Development Community that the Harare unity government should be disbanded because it has become totally dysfunctional.

The hardliners are calling on the parliamentary committee responsible for overhauling the constitution to abandon the revision process and let the country to hold elections.

They say the views Zimbabweans expressed in a 2010 outreach phase have not been incorporated in early drafts, and that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change is delaying the process to fend off early elections.

ZANU-PF members of the constitution drafting technical team, Godwills Masimirembwa and Jacob Mudenda, say drafters have not delivered a proper document.

ZANU-PF politburo member Jonathan Moyo says the constitution-making process has become a "dead and already stinking donkey," charging that the two MDC formations in government are using it to subvert popular views gathered in public hearings.

Moyo contended that it is unthinkable anyone in SADC would make putting the new constitution in place a precondition for holding new elections in Zimbabwe - though that is one of the basic premises of the 2008 Global Political Agreement for power sharing, which is the basis for the unity government launched in February 2009.

Attorney Jeremiah Bamu of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said ZANU-PF knows broad reforms would undermine its already weak electoral position.

Jonathan Moyo is said to be managing the plan to attack the Constitutional reform process on the back of gatecrashing into the Zanu-PF negotiations of the SADC-sponsored power-sharing truce facilitated by South African President Jacob Zuma.

The former minister of information and publicity is seen as one of the hardliners in Zanu-PF and is close to the securocrats who have vowed not to salute Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai even if he beats President Robert Mugabe in the next elections.

Moyo has been a fiery critic of Zuma's mediation efforts and particularly of Lindiwe Zulu, whom he has attacked in lengthy articles in the state media.

Critics say it is Moyo's acerbic tongue that Zanu-PF has found to be a vital cog in its propaganda machinery as the party attempts to reverse its political misfortunes against Tsvangirai's MDC as elections loom.

The combative Moyo, who is accused of orchestrating the closure of The Daily News in 2003, as well as the bombing of its printing presses earlier, is seen to be rising in Zanu-PF after being appointed to the central committee before being parachuted into the politburo after his re-admission in July 2009.

By Special correspondent