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NCA to ratchet up protests
Ray Matikinye, The Independent
April 14, 2005

http://www.theindependent.co.zw/news/2005/April/Friday15/2124.html

THE National Constitutional Assembly has begun ratcheting up pressure on government to draw up a new constitution that opens up democratic space.

NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku told a press briefing in Harare yesterday that their taskforce had resolved to convene a stakeholders’ conference to chart "the means and strategies by which Zimbabweans can craft their own comprehensive and democratic constitution".

The civic organisation will soon convene an all-stakeholders’ conference to map the way forward.

Madhuku said the NCA would intensify pressure for a new homegrown constitution despite threats by government to crush any protest. President Mugabe promised to crush any mass action by those who were not happy with his party’s victory in the March 31 parliamentary election.

Madhuku said he was confident government would accede to his organisation and the people of Zimbabwe’s demands. "Our protest are different in that we are not protesting to remove a government. Unlike political parties, we are mobilising Zimbabweans to demand a new constitution," Madhuku said.

Madhuku said the NCA was opposed to President Mugabe’s intended use of his party’s parliamentary majority to tinker with the constitution. "We do not want a constitution crafted by the Zanu PF central committee because the constitutional amendments Mugabe envisages include packing the proposed Senate with compliant Zanu PF members who will endorse whatever he says," Madhuku said.

The NCA was prepared to incorporate democratic reform elements suggested in the Chidyausiku constitutional draft that was rejected in a referendum in 2000 and the NCA’s own draft.

"What is fatally wrong with the Chidyausiku constitutional draft is the concentration of powers in the president. There are good elements in that draft but those democratic elements come unstuck and are grossly overshadowed by powers vested in one individual," Madhuku said.

The NCA has railed against Sadc and AU’s endorsement of flawed elections last month saying this was a serious indictment on the competence and integrity of the two organisations.

It accuses both the Sadc and AU observer missions of dereliction of duty in failing to appreciate that the election results are the whole point of an election and that the serious discrepancies in results announced by the ZEC totally discredited the whole process.

"All that the so-called election has achieved is leave in its wake a sorry mess characterised by improbable and contradictory results as well as a nation divided along rural and urban as well as tribal lines," Madhuku said.

"Zimbabwe is yet again left with a parliament that is impotent in resolving the

country’s political and economic stalemate," he said.

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