HARARE – Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party will today hold a crisis meeting to consider suspending “nearly all contact” with President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party, sources said yesterday, as Zimbabwe’s coalition government looked headed for more choppy waters.

The sources said the MDC was not going to pull out of the shaky unity government it formed with ZANU PF nearly eight months ago.

But they said the party was expected to resolve to drastically limit conduct with Mugabe’s party and to boycott Cabinet that is chaired by the veteran leader to protest the detention last Wednesday of MDC treasurer general Roy Bennett.

Bennett, who is facing controversial terrorism charges, is due to make an application for bail at the High Court today.

The sources said there was a push for the MDC to hold its own Cabinet and Council of Ministers meetings separate from ZANU PF and chaired by Tsvangirai, in what would amount to virtually a split in the unity government leaving Zimbabwe with two parallel administrations.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa confirmed today’s emergency meeting but would neither confirm nor deny that the MDC was considering cutting nearly all contact with ZANU PF, only saying that there were several options that the meeting will be asked to consider.

“We have options on the table which will be considered on their merit at the national executive council meeting,” Chamisa said.

Chamisa also said today’s meeting would not be limited to the case of Bennett but would examine several outstanding issues from last year’s global political agreement (GPA) with ZANU PF that is the basis of the power-sharing government.

 “There will be an extraordinary national executive council meeting tomorrow (Friday) to spotlight on outstanding issues in the GPA, especially the indictment of Roy Bennett,” said Chamisa.

The MDC is unhappy that Mugabe has refused to rescind his unilateral appointment of his supporters to head the central bank and the Attorney General’s office in breach of the power-sharing agreement that says such appointments should be by consultation.

The former opposition party, which says the charges against Bennett are political, says his prosecution of Bennett is a further breach of the unity agreement under which Mugabe undertook to halt all political prosecutions.

Bennett, who has been on bail since March after spending a month in prison, was indicted to the High Court on Wednesday on charges of possessing weapons for the purposes of committing banditry, insurgency and terrorism. He denies the charges.

The 52-year-old Bennett is a white farmer who was named by Tsvangirai for the post of deputy agriculture minister in the country's power-sharing government.

Mugabe has refused to swear in Bennett to his ministerial post citing the charges against him although those close to the President says he has conceded in private that the state has no case against the MDC politician, while on the other hand the prosecution has looked not in a hurry to conclude the case.

The MDC accuses the Attorney General's office – which is fiercely loyal to Mugabe – of conspiring to keep Bennett, whose farm was seized by ZANU PF loyalists during the country's controversial land reform campaign, out of government.

By Zimonline