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'Democracy gone wrong' in Zim
13/04/2008 23:01 - (SA)
Cape Town - Parliamentarians cannot remain silent about Zimbabwe, a case of "democracy gone wrong", National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete said in Cape Town on Sunday.
A SADC special meeting in Lusaka on Saturday had urged a speedy resolution to a "democratic process gone wrong", Mbete said to applause at the opening of the 118th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting.
"We look forward to a lasting solution in the interest of peace and stability in Zimbabwe and in the SADC region."
Another major concern was the "rapidly deteriorating situation" in several countries in the world. Economic slowdown in US The Middle East, particularly Palestine, remained a "serious threat" to peace and stability, she said, again to applause.
"The building of the wall, the violations of human rights and the continuous aggression must stop immediately."
Also of concern was the economic slowdown in the United States and rising food and oil prices which had severely affected developing nations.
The IPU, a gathering of over 140 parliaments worldwide, would try to find solutions to the problem during the week's discussions.
Mbete also called for the IPU to work more closely with the United Nations.
More also had to be done to ensure more women were represented in the IPU and in the delegations of member countries.
She said parliamentarians had to claim back their role as overseers of government, both domestically and internationally.
"The view has developed among parliamentarians around the globe that we have deferred foreign policy to the executive and have failed to ensure that the voice of the people we represent is articulated in those policies," she said. Emancipation of women
In his speech President Thabo Mbeki congratulated the IPU for its stance on gender equality in government and programmes that focused on the emancipation of women.
Rising food prices and the subsequent protests across the globe and in several African countries were an "increasingly serious problem" that was impacting negatively on efforts to fight poverty.
Hopefully the critical nature of the matter would give "some impetus" to World Trade Organisation negotiations, he said.
He criticised the response of "very tepid, weak," to the UN's millennium development goals, one of which was halving poverty worldwide by 2015.
Ending poverty required significant and sustained transfers of resources from rich to poor countries.
This would not happen automatically or be driven by market forces, he said.
In his written speech, from which Mbeki omitted large sections in the interest of brevity, he wrote that farming subsidies had allowed "agribusiness" to expand its grip on world markets.
"Clearly, such industry concentration makes for unfair competition, inefficient markets and inappropriate influence over policy areas such as trade regulations."
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