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Zimbabwe
'has right' to bar African lawmakers fact-finding mission, lawmaker
says
Associated
Press
May 13, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/13/africa/AF-GEN-Zimbabwe-Politics.php
HARARE, Zimbabwe: The
government "has the right" to block entry to Zimbabwe
of a fact-finding mission of the Pan African Parliament, a lawmaker
said, according to the state Sunday Mail newspaper.
Members of the
continentwide parliamentary body agreed
at a meeting in neighboring South Africa last week to investigate
conditions of political and economic turmoil by sending African
legislators to the country, the paper said.
But Zimbabwe lawmaker
Joram Gumbo, who represented the ruling ZANU PF party at the meeting,
described the organization as "a noisemaking body" with
no legislative powers.
Ruling party views were
overwhelmed at the meeting by biased lobbying by the main opposition
Movement for Democratic Change and other groups, Gumbo told the
paper.
The Pan African Parliament,
a largely symbolic body of the African Union, was required to inform
the government of its intention to send a delegation and "the
government still has the right to bar the mission," Gumbo said.
In the past, the government
has repeatedly turned away similar delegations. Several international
labor groups invited by Zimbabwe's main opposition-aligned labor
federation have been barred entry at the main Harare airport and
sent home on the next available flights.
The state media, meanwhile,
applauded Zimbabwe's election to head the U.N. Commission on Sustainable
Development for the next year.
Developing countries
had dismissed the "ranting and raving" of Western nations
over the country's own economic crisis and alleged abuses of democratic
and human rights in Zimbabwe, The Sunday Mail said.
State radio said despite
"economic challenges" at home, Zimbabwe was expected to
take a leading role in promoting sustainable development worldwide
for the next year, contributing its skills and expertise through
new commission head Francis Nhema, the Zimbabwe tourism minister,
and other Zimbabwean officials of caliber.
Zimbabwe has the world's
fastest shrinking economy outside a war zone, according to the International
Monetary Fund.
Inflation is running
at 2,200 percent, the highest in the world, and the nation, once
a regional breadbasket, faces acute shortages of food, hard currency,
gasoline and most basic goods.
President Robert Mugabe
blames Western economic sanctions and drought for the economic meltdown.
Britain, the European
Union and the United States deny imposing blanket sanctions, arguing
they have only targeted Mugabe and political leaders through restrictions
on travel to their countries and foreign-held assets.
In a paper published
in The Sunday Mail, central bank governor Gideon Gono acknowledged
foreign investors shied away from Zimbabwe because of "perceived
risk" after the often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned
farms without market-linked compensation began in 2000.
In 1998, foreign investors
pumped US$444.3 million (€326.4 million) into the economy,
compared to just US$50 million (€36 million) last year, he
said.
The nation's foreign
debts soared to US$2.5 billion (€1.8 billion) last year, compared
to US$109 million in unpaid foreign arrears in 1999, he said.
Foreign loans and development
aid also dried up, Gono said. Development agencies preferred to
take their money elsewhere, at the expense of ordinary citizens.
"Three quarters
of the equipment in hospitals in the capital is not functioning
and this has had serious repercussions on the ordinary people."
"On the whole, sanctions
are partly responsible for the decline of economic activity over
the last seven years," he said.
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