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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Health Crisis - Focus on Cholera and Anthrax - Index of articles
Police ban MDC rallies because of cholera
Raymond
Maingire, The Zimbabwe Times
November 21, 2008
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=7719
Police in Harare
have barred the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
from holding two rallies that were scheduled for this weekend. They
cited the outbreak of the deadly cholera disease in the capital
city and an alleged failure by the MDC to provide the police with
stationery.
The MDC had called for
two rallies for Saturday and Sunday in the high density suburbs
of Kuwadzana and Glen View in Harare, its stronghold. The MDC says
the rallies were intended to update Zimbabweans on the progress
being made in the on-going power-sharing negotiations with Zanu
PF.
Party vice president
Thokozani Khupe was set to address one of the rallies together with
several MDC officials.
Police have cited the
deadly pandemic, which government says has spread to nine provinces
in the country, as the reason to ban the rallies.
This is despite multitudes
of ordinary Zimbabweans being allowed to scramble for scarce cash
everyday in banking halls all over Harare. Police cited a second
reason for their failure to approve the rallies.
They say they could not
formally respond to the MDC's as the party had failed to supply
them with scarce bond paper on which to print their response.
Zimbabwe's stringent
security laws require political parties and like organizations to
first seek clearance with the police before proceeding with any
gatherings.
The security laws do
not compel political parties to provide any material, let alone
paper, to enable them to perform their routine duties. For years
now the police have demanded that members of the republic making
reports to the police should provide transport to enable them to
the cases.
Meanwhile, the move to
ban the rallies has elicited angry reactions from the MDC which
claims the police are acting on instructions from government to
punish it for refusing to partake in a unity government under a
patently skewed power sharing arrangement.
"While the MDC appreciates
the magnitude of the cholera outbreak," the MDC said in a press
statement distributed by its information and publicity department
Friday, "We believe that the police are playing games and the
ban is part of a cocktail of political measures to punish the MDC
for not 'playing ball' in the dialogue process."
The MDC says rallies
have become the only possible means available to it to communicate
with its supporters in the absence of media to carry its messages
to the ordinary people.
Said the MDC,
"Rallies are the only platform through which the MDC can communicate
with its members and any attempt to ban rallies is tantamount to
political suffocation."
The MDC continues to
draw huge crowds to most of its rallies countrywide.
Zanu PF and MDC signed
a power sharing agreement on September 15 which was brokered by
former South African President Thabo Mbeki on behalf of SADC. The
MDC has accused Zanu-PF of working against the spirit of the agreement.
Article 10 of
the power-sharing agreement
signed by the rival parties allows free political activity by all
political parties in Zimbabwe.
It reads, ". the
parties have agreed that there should be free political activity
throughout Zimbabwe within the ambit of the law in which all political
parties are able to propagate their views and canvass for support,
free of harassment and intimidation."
The implementation of
the agreement has been delayed by a fierce jostling over key ministerial
posts and government appointments despite the intervention of SADC
early this month.
President Robert Mugabe's
government is increasingly becoming agitated by the MDC's continued
refusal to participate in the new government.
The MDC is campaigning
for sole control of the Home Affairs ministry which is in charge
of the police and the Registrar General's office which handles elections.
The MDC accuses Zanu-PF
of using the police to bar its political activities at the same
time using the same ministry to rig elections.
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