EU excuse for lifting sanctions ‘feeble’

By Wilbert Mukori

The European Union made another effort to give a rational reason to its irrational decision to lift the sanctions and re-engage the Mugabe regime. 

Mugabe still maintains it was the sanctions that caused Zimbabwe’s economic melt-down and not mismanagement and corruption. Indeed Mugabe has continued to vehemently deny there was corruption in Zimbabwe.

Even if one was to accept Mugabe’s position that the country’s economic melt-down was cause by the sanctions, this will only point to a fundamental but serious weakness in the Zimbabwe economy.

If sanctions imposed on a hundred individuals by a handful of nations can result in the total collapse of the nation’s economy then those hundred individuals must be therefore have a totally disproportionate economic clout!

A nation of over 12 million people and all economic power is concentrated in the hands of Mugabe and his cronies!

Mugabe has to explain how this had happen, if this is not proof of rampant corruption and looting by the ruling elite? The very evils that are in fact responsible for the economic melt-down and which Mugabe has for years vehemently denied!

With all due respect to EU’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, Aldo Dell’Ariccia, but he is not being honest here.

“As a matter of fact, there is an evolution of the situation in the country, a positive evolution,” said the envoy. What evolution is he talking about?

MDC failed to get any meaningful reforms implemented much to the disappointment of all these including the EU, USA and SADC who had pushed Tsvangirai hard to implement the reforms but to no avail.

It was the failure to get any meaningful reforms in the country’s key institutions like the Police, media, ZES, etc. that allowed Mugabe to blatantly rig the July 2013 elections.

The EU had a simple choice here, to abandon Zimbabwe’s search for democratic change as SADC has done and accept Mugabe’s vote rigging. Or simply refuse to give legitimacy to an illegitimate regime as the Americans, Canadians and Australians have done.

Initially the EU’s position was the same as that of the Americans, Mugabe rigged the elections and therefore he is illegitimate.

In the last eight months the EU has been softening its position, pushed hard notably by the Belgians who are keen to get Zimbabwe’s diamonds regardless of the true stories of looting and brutal oppression going on in Marange.

I would accept if the EU was to come out and say MDC should have implemented the reforms, they did not and now the rest of the people have to suffer and the EU has to lift the sanctions and move on.

Instead the EU is now coming up with a feeble excuse for lifting sanctions and talk of “a positive evolution” when the nation has in fact regressed.

For anyone to say the new Constitution was anything other than just another MDC blunder is an insult to the people of Zimbabwe. MDC assured the nation that the new constitution would deliver free and fair elections and, of course, it did no such thing.

It was Mugabe “who wrote the constitution,” as MP Paul Mangwana, Mugabe’s own Zanu PF crony of the body set to write the new Constitution later admitted. The new constitution turned out to be a dictator’s creed and not the democratic constitution the nation wanted.

The economic melt-down crystalized by the reckless spend before the 2013 elections and after by Mugabe plus the ill effects of the three decades of rampant corruption has pushed the Zimbabwe economy into a dangerous nose-dive.

Having agreed to re-engage the regime the EU now faces the tough decision of being on the sinking Titanic but helpless to influence the way forward because having tacitly accepted Mugabe’s legitimacy they have to accept his determination to remain at the helm!

Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia, is the EU going to bankroll the $27 billion ZimAsset bailout?

Whatever the EU pays to appease Mugabe it will be wasted because he is not going to deal with the root cause of the problem which is corruption. The only sure thing is he will continue to denounce the West and demand they pay him more!

This is one mess the greed of one country has ended up dragging all the other EU countries into and now all them are going to end up with egg on their faces!