HARARE – Zimbabwe’s constitutional reform commission has retracted calls for the arrest of NGO workers monitoring public consultations on the proposed new governance charter, saying it wanted to work with civil society on the reforms.

Leaders of the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee (COPAC) last Sunday accused the monitors of sowing confusion and spreading falsehoods about the public outreach exercise with one of the body’s joint-chairmen calling on the police to arrest the civil society workers.

But the COPAC chiefs, Paul Mangwana and Douglass Mwonzora from President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T respectively yesterday claimed they had been misquoted in the reports carried by ZimOnline and various other publications including the government-owned newspapers.

“We very much want you to play a role in this process,” Mwonzora told representatives from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) and Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) that have together deployed monitors to shadow COPAC teams.

Mangwana yesterday admitted calling for police intervention but claimed he had only meant that the police should arrest “some naughty people” who were disrupting the outreach exercise. He said his was not referring to monitors from NGOs although he did not identify the naughty people that he wanted arrested.

“I used the word arrest myself. There were some naughty people in Mashonaland West (province), who were interfering with the process…. we want our process to be as transparent as possible. It’s your right to participate but let’s make it manageable,” Mangwana said.

The three pro-democracy and human rights groups have dispatched 420 people around the country to monitor the government-led constitution making process in order to be able to evaluate whether the exercise was democratic and the outcome a true reflection of the people’s wishes.

The monitors have issued reports highlighting administrative chaos dogging the constitutional outreach exercise and widespread intimidation, with Zanu (PF) party said to be telling villagers what to say during meetings to gather the public’s views.

It was these adverse reports that appeared to have angered Mwonzora and Mangwana and triggered their outbursts against the NGOs which they now deny.

The exercise to write a new constitution for Zimbabwe to replace the current one drafted by former colonial power Britain is part of a drive by the coalition government of Mugabe and Tsvangirai to democratise the southern African country’s politics ahead of fresh elections.

There had been fears that arrest or removal of civil society monitors from the field would make it nearly impossible to expose the widespread intimidation that has characterised the early days of the outreach programme that has been running for just more than three weeks now.

Soldiers and ZANU PF supporters have been campaigning for the adoption of the controversial Kariba draft constitution as the basis of the proposed new charter and are allegedly instructing villagers to tailor their contributions during outreach meetings to reflect provisions of the controversial draft.

ZANU PF and the two former opposition MDC formations secretly authored the Kariba draft in 2007.  

But critics say the Kariba document should be discarded because it leaves untouched the immense presidential powers that analysts say Mugabe has used to stifle opposition to his rule for the past three decades.

By Zimonline