Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has appointed lawmakers and provincial governors despite deadlocked power-sharing talks, state media reported on Monday.
He appointed three non-constituency members of Parliament’s upper house, the Senate, and eight provincial governors.
Mugabe intends to officially open Parliament on Tuesday despite protests by Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that this would scuttle negotiations on forming a unity government to end the current political impasse.
In terms of the Constitution, Mugabe can appoint five non-constituency members of the Senate. He has only filled three of those slots, presumably reserving the other two for the opposition.
Tsvangirai maintains that a power-sharing agreement is being held up by Mugabe’s refusal to give up executive powers. Mugabe says Tsvangirai wants to strip him of all authority.
Under a power-sharing deal under negotiation, one of the two senate seats is likely to be filled by Tsvangirai, who has been earmarked to become prime minister. –
‘Nothing is clear’
”Nothing is clear on the political side, but unfortunately this also means the economy is condemned to suffer some more,” said Eldred Masunungure, a political science professor at the University of Zimbabwe.
”I think in the coming days we are going to see a hardening of positions again as a matter of political pride, but because both parties need some kind of settlement for their political future, they will also resume the talks very soon,” he said.
”There is a lot of political and economic pressure on these guys … but I think there is now more pressure on Tsvangirai especially from SADC [Southern African Development Community],” he added.
Without a power-sharing deal accepted as credible by major Western countries, Zimbabwe’s economy — which critics say has been destroyed by Mugabe’s attack on the agriculture sector, where he seized and distributed white-owned commercial farms to inexperienced black farmers — will get worse, analysts say.
Tsvangirai’s absence from a new government would do nothing to dispel investors’ concerns about a country facing economic ruin, with the world’s highest inflation of 11-million percent, huge food and fuel shortages, and 80% unemployment.
Many families are surviving on one meal a day and can barely find the staple maize meal. Basics like milk and meat have become luxuries in what was once Southern Africa’s bread basket. – Reuters