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This article participates on the following special index pages:
New Constitution-making process - Index of articles
The MDC dissociates itself from the so-called COPAC National report
Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC)
December
23, 2011
The Movement for Democratic Change and the Parliamentary Select
Committee completely dissociate themselves from and completely dismisses
the so called national report published in The Herald.
The report purports
to be a Copac report yet it was not Copac that instructed The Herald
to publish this report. The official position at Copac is that the
national report on the constitution
making process is not yet complete and will only be made available
to the people of Zimbabwe once it has been completed.
The minutes
to that effect were signed to by all three co-chairpersons of Copac,
Hon Douglas Mwonzora, Hon Paul Mangwana and Hon Edward Mkosi.
It is now imperative
to advise the nation that there is no agreement regarding the formatting
of this report. However there is a standing agreement that any report
containing the people's views must have both the quantitative and
the qualitative aspects of the outreach data. In other words the
data must contain what the people said and the circumstances under
which they said those things.
At no point
did the Select Committee submit any report to The Herald. No member
of the authorised Copac staff submited any report to The Herald.
It there is clear that this report is a Zanu PF document written
and submitted by the faction of Zanu PF that is fighting against
the drafters in the constitution making process. It appears that
this is the work of some individuals who are panicking about the
possible outcome of the drafting process.
The MDC reiterates
that this report is not authentic for the following reasons:
a. There is
no Select Committee resolution for the publication of any report.
In fact the Select Committee position is that the National Report
is not yet complete.
b. The so called
report purports to show the support of the various issues by ascribing
a percentage figure to each issue. That way the authors wanted to
give an impression that certain issues enjoyed the support of the
people of Zimbabwe more than others. This is clearly fraudulent.
No voting was conducted on any issue during outreach. No people
were counted. Therefore how can the authors of the report purport
to show figures indicating support of a thing? How did they arrive
at those figures?
c. A Copac report
would show where exactly particular information was obtained. This
report does not do so. A Copac report would also show the atmosphere
of each meeting or group of meetings. For example a Copac report
would show that there was violence or that the atmosphere was peaceful.
This report does not do so. It pretends that all meetings, if any
were peaceful. Zimbabweans know that this is false.
d. From the
reading of the report it appears that the information written was
obtained in the wards in Zimbabwe. This means that this report does
not contain the views from the Diaspora, institutional submissions,
institutional submissions, people living with disabilities and views
from members of parliament.
It is common
cause that Copac obtained views from these sources besides the public
meetings. In so far as it completely omits information from these
critical sources it can not purport to be a Copac document.
e. This so-called
national report does not include the " list of constitutional
issues" extracted from the outreach documents by the technical
team that included, Mr. Masimirembwa and Mr. Mudenda of Zanu PF
nor does it include the list of agreed constitutional principles
drawn by the Select Committee and approved by the management committee.
f. Fraudulently,
the authors of this report want to use frequencies to show the popularity
of an issue. Yet frequency in the Copac sense refers to the number
of meetings at which a thing was mentioned and not the number of
people who supported the issue.
The so-called
report is fake. At the last meeting of Copac it was found that the
drafters had done nothing wrong and that they should proceed with
their work. The drafters advised us that they were taking a Christmas
break and would resume work on the 3 rd of January 2012.
The reports
that the drafters were stopped from work are completely false. The
drafters are not going to draft the constitution using the national
report but are going to use the extracts of constitutional issues
given to them by the Select Committee.
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