By Lance Guma [twitter-follow username=”lanceguma” scheme=”dark”]
The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) has demanded that the Constitutional Parliamentary Select Committee (Copac) should apologise to the people of Zimbabwe for wasting their time and tax payer’s money.
This follows reports that the three parties in the coalition government might dump the US$ 42 million dollar Copac draft constitution that Zanu PF is stubbornly resisting and amend the current controversial Lancaster House Constitution that critics feel gives President Mugabe too much power.
“From the start we contested that the process was not democratic, not inclusive and it has now proved beyond doubt that the Copac route was not the way to go as it has dismally failed to provide a constitution for Zimbabweans,” NCA spokesman Madock Chivasa told Nehanda Radio.
Chivasa said the Copac process was defective because it was not led by an Independent Commission. “It was dominated by the three political parties who constitute the inclusive government. In short the COPAC process was a “politician-driven process” and not “people-driven” he said.
“We are also ashamed by the desperate attempts by the Principals to resuscitate and bring life to a corpse (COPAC). Instead of laying wreaths and admit that the COPAC process is dead they are busy misleading the nation that something will come out of the failed money spinning project.
“Apart from the process being not democratic, we also therefore note with great concern the millions of dollars wasted in this failed project. As NCA we are also alarmed that up until this day that money has not been properly accounted for,” Chivasa said.
On Wednesday Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Eric Matinenga told London based SW Radio Africa that they had made ‘very good’ progress in their final day of talks in Harare.
Matinenga confirmed that the seven member cabinet committee would meet Wednesday evening (yesterday) to go through a draft report that would be presented to the GPA principals on Thursday.
‘We finished our meeting at 3pm and met our secretariat to draft a report that we will look at tonight (Wednesday evening) so that it is in a state to be presented to the principals.’
Asked if they had finally dealt with all the contentious issues after three years of drafting the constitution, Matinenga retorted: ‘If I say it was a good meeting and we made good progress that should mean a lot.’