Mugabe wants senate
2005-03-01 21:43
Special Report
Zimbabwe’s PM Morgan Tsvangirai has called for openness in the country’s nascent diamond trade, getting underway after the lifting of a global ban over rights abuses.
A dusty road leads to the village of Wedza, where veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war eke out a meagre living on their farm cooperative, which after a promising start now brings only despair.
Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has resurrected plans to set up a second chamber of parliament in a move dismissed by opposition leaders on Tuesday as a way of giving positions to his cronies.
Mugabe said he wants to hold elections for a new senate in June, within three months of a hotly contested national assembly vote on March 31, the state-run Herald newspaper reported.
A previous plan to set up a 60-seat senate, included in a proposed new constitution, was rejected in a 2000 referendum.
To make the change now, Mugabe's Zanu-PF would need to secure a two-thirds majority in the March vote.
Zanu-PF is already only a handful of seats short of the votes it needs.
The ruling party claimed just 62 of parliament's 120 elected seats in the last election in 2000. But Mugabe appoints an additional 30 seats, giving his party a sweeping majority.
The last election was marred by violence and allegations of vote rigging, and opposition leaders are already saying that this vote will be far from free and fair.
'Don't despair
Mugabe, addressing supporters in the northern Hurungwe district on Monday, said ruling party members who failed to secure nomination to run for a seat in the national assembly in March could find a place in the senate.
"Those candidates who lost must not despair. We are one family," Mugabe was quoted as saying.
David Coltart, an official with the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said his party did not object in principle to setting up a senate.
But he said he was wary of the government's intentions.
"This smacks of yet another attempt by Zanu-PF to create positions for cronies, rather than an attempt to make our institutions of governance more democratic," he said.
"We believe constitutional reform should involve the public, civil society and should result in wide-ranging changes to our constitution, including a dramatic reduction in the powers of the executive, and a corresponding increase in power to the legislature and judiciary."
Senate abolished in 1990
Zimbabwe had a senate after independence from white rule in 1980, but it was abolished in 1990.
The Herald, which serves as a government mouthpiece, said the new body would likely be structured along the same lines as the 2000 proposal.
That would mean the senate would have 60 members, 40 of them selected on the basis of proportional representation from Zimbabwe's 10 provinces.
The other 20 would include traditional leaders - most of whom support the ruling party - and other Zimbabweans whom the Herald said "would have contributed immensely to the country's development."
The paper did not specify the selection procedures.
With less than a month to go before the elections, Mugabe has stepped up his campaign, donating computers to impoverished rural schools around the country.
The opposition, meanwhile, complains that at least three of its parliamentary candidates and two other party members have been arrested for putting up campaign posters.
- AP