Zimbabwe’s main opposition party appealed yesterday for help from regional bloc Southern African Development Community (SADC) to unlock stalled power-sharing talks as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe threatened to form a new Cabinet.
“It is very clear that the deadlock in the current dialogue has to be unlocked,” Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told SA FM radio.
“And to be unlocked we need the help of SADC and the helping hand of the mediator, [South African] President Thabo Mbeki,” he said.
“It is better to be talking than fighting. Our country is so important, so precious. We need to resolve all our differences through dialogue for prosperity and stability in the country,” he said.
Mugabe was quoted in state media on Thursday as saying that he would move ahead and form a government if Tvsangirai did not sign a power-sharing deal on Thursday.
“We are a government, and we are a government that is empowered by elections,” the Herald, a governing party mouthpiece, quoted Mugabe as telling reporters on Wednesday when he was in Zambia for the funeral of Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa.
“So we should form a Cabinet. We will not allow a situation where we will not have a Cabinet forever,” he said. “If after tomorrow [Thursday], Tsvangirai does not want to sign, we will certainly put together a Cabinet. We feel frozen at the moment,” he said.
Tendai Biti, Tsvangirai’s chief negotiator in the power-sharing talks, said on Thursday that the Herald story was the only word the MDC had had of any plans by Mugabe to unilaterally name a Cabinet. That raised the possibility the Herald story was an attempt by Mugabe to pressure the opposition to try to break a deadlock in the talks.
Chamisa said yesterday it would be “tragic” if Mugabe proceeded to form a Cabinet without the power-sharing talks being concluded.
“In fact, he will be committing a political suicide because there is no way that that cabinet is going to be functional because it does not have a legitimacy, the endorsement and the support of the people as well as the MDC,” he said.
Talks between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, whose MDC holds a parliamentary majority, were deadlocked in mid-August over Mugabe’s desire to retain control of the security forces, the opposition said. Last ditch attempts to revive the negotiations by Mbeki failed last week.
Tsvangirai rejected a deal that would have seen security ministries reporting to Mugabe and economic and social ministries to himself.
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