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MDC seeks 11th-hour go-ahead
29/01/2004 19:15 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was Thursday frantically trying to get a court order to allow it to hold a meeting in the evening to launch a proposed rescue package for the beleaguered economy.
"We are making an urgent application to the (High) Court so that the police are barred from preventing us to hold the launch," MDC Secretary for Economic Affairs and lawyer Tendai Biti said.
The meeting, at which the MDC's economic blueprint, dubbed 'Restart' - which stands for Reconstruction, Stabilisation, Recovery, Transformation - would be launched, has been denied police approval as required under the controversial Public Order and Security Act.
Party spokesperson Paul Temba Nyathi said the police had withheld approval despite the application having been lodged a week ago, as required by law.
"The police now claim that the application was left in the wrong office and thus was not processed," Nyathi said in a statement.
A fresh application was lodged on Monday but "the police say that this is insufficient notice for them".
Under the law a notice has to be made four days in advance of a planned meeting.
"These are merely lies and excuses from a regime that seeks to prevent the people... access to a comprehensive programme," said Nyathi.
The MDC accused the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party of preventing it from publishing policies that offer a solution to Zimbabwe's grave economic crisis.
"Zanu-PF fears that this MDC programme will fully expose its own shortcomings," said Nyathi.
"We condemn this clear anti-democratic act which is yet another demonstration of the Zanu-PF government's contempt for freedom of speech."
"What sort of country are we living in when an opposition party that controls 12 major cities ... is denied the basic right of communicating policies to the people?" he questioned.
Zimbabwe's economy has been in a nose-dive in recent years with international support drying up, and rates of inflation and interest skyrocketing to record highs.
The central bank recently introduced measures that have seen prices of certain basic commodities come back down and the country's currency firming against international currencies on the foreign exchange market.
A two-and-half year food crisis has meanwhile seen the country seeking international humanitarian aid to feed millions of people faced with starvation.
- AFP
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