By Richard Chidza
HARARE – President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF is panicking after a key meeting between Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and former North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) commander, General Wesley Clark.
Zanu PF stalwart and Justice and Legal Affairs minister Patrick Chinamasa exposed the party’s panic at Tsvangirai’s meeting with the Nato commander, rehashing the often repeated accusations that the MDC leader was “selling” out. Chinamasa claimed Tsvangirai’s meeting with the Nato chief “will bring utter chaos to this country.”
Speaking at a monthly public discussion hosted by Sapes Trust on Thursday under the theme “After Luanda, Whither Zimbabwe”, Chinamasa said Tsvangirai’s meeting gave Zimbabwe army generals carte blanche to meddle in Zimbabwean politics.
Tsvangirai reportedly met Clark when he visited Vienna and attended the second meeting of the Centre for Global Dialogue and Cooperation from May 16-18. His spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka confirmed the meeting but warned that noone had the right to prescribe who the Prime Minister meets.
Nato helped the rag-tag Libyan rebel army to oust and kill dictator Muammar Gaddaffi last year. Chinamasa said it was unacceptable that Tsvangirai goes to meet the head of such a body and come back and tell “our liberators not to comment on such threats.”
“If any leader hobnobs and meets with the Nato commander hoping to reverse the gains of that revolution, it is very careless, I want to emphasise it is very careless,” Chinamasa told the policy dialogue.
“For that leader to come and say I have freedom to meet Nato commander but I do not allow former freedom fighters who are in the army to say how angry they are with that threat, I do not agree with it,” said Chinamasa.
Representatives of the two MDCs in the Global Political Agreement (GPA) Tendai Biti and Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga who also attended the discussion forum had earlier warned that their respective parties will continue to push for realignment in the security sector.
“The Troika’s seventh decision is clear in that it urges parties to desist from violence and election talk, implement reforms that include electoral, media and security sector and we agree with that,” said Misihairabwi-Mushonga. She warned generals to stop dabbling in politics.
In hard-line bombast, Chinamasa said Zimbabwe’s independence and freedom did not come on a silver platter; and that there was a protracted armed struggle waged by two liberation armies, some of whose members are still serving in the army. Daily News
