Zimbabwe's MDC: Long road to travel to unity government (Roundup)

Oct 28, 2008, 15:13 GMT

Harare - Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Tuesday rejected the assessment of a regional body that the party's dispute with President Robert Mugabe boiled down to control of a single government ministry.

The party was reacting to a communique issued by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) at the end of a one-day mini-summit in Harare on Zimbabwe's political crisis.

After failing to resolve the situation, a group of SADC leaders called for a full SADC summit to urgently tackle the six-week-long standoff between the MDC and Mugabe's Zanu-PF party over a unity government.

The SADC leaders, who included South African President Kgalema Motlanthe and Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, said only the ministry of home affairs was still in dispute.

But MDC secretary general Tendai Biti told journalists 'the entire gamut of ministries is still open, contrary to the widely publicized view that it is only one ministry that still outstanding.'

Under the terms of the September deal, Mugabe remains president and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai becomes prime minister in a government of 31 ministries.

Zanu-PF is to get 15 ministries, Tsvangirai's MDC faction 13 and a breakaway MDC faction the remaining three, but they disagree on who should get which portfolio.

Biti said the MDC had identified 10 key ministries which should be shared equitably between Zanu-PF and the MDC.

For each of the 10 ministries that went to Zanu-PF, the MDC would get a ministry in the same grouping, according to the party's logic.

So, if, as has been provisionally agreed, Zanu-PF took the defence ministry, the MDC should get home affairs, which controls the police, as both are in the same security cluster, he explained.

Biti also cited other issues that make a unity government look like a far-off prospect.

They included lack of clarity over the extent of MDC oversight in Mugabe's power to hire and fire ministers and diplomats and the wording of a constitutional amendment that would make the September agreement legally binding.

Despite appeals by world leaders to quickly form a government to begin digging the country of a harsh economic crisis, both the MDC and Zanu-PF appear to be losing their appetite for power-sharing.

The MDC, which won the last parliamentary elections and took the most votes in the last credible presidential poll has started floating the idea of new elections.

Biti said 'the one instruction that those suffering and abused people have been telling us at our (recent) massive rallies all over Zimbabwe is a bold but simple one: A bad deal is no deal at all.'