Opposition 'pulls out of Zimbabwean govt'
Prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai said the MDC was not pulling out officially
Also In The News
|
By Matthew Champion. |  |
Friday, 16, Oct 2009 06:07
By Nqobani Ndlovu.
Zimbabwe's main opposition party has resolved to boycott cabinet meetings chaired by president Robert Mugabe in protest at the jailing of a top party official on Wednesday.
An urgent meeting by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party on Friday resolved the party was disengaging from all government business until Roy Bennett, the treasurer general of the party, is released from jail.
Mr Bennett, a former white commercial farmer, was jailed on Wednesday over terrorism charges that the MDC party says are trumped up.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the country's prime minister and MDC leader, said the party resolved to cut all contact with President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party over the Bennett jailing and failure by the veteran leader to implement outstanding terms of a power sharing agreement.
"We are not really pulling out officially," Mr Tsvangirai told journalists after the crisis meeting.
"Until confidence has been restored we can't continue to pretend that everything is well. It is our right to disengage from Zanu-PF."
Source say there is a push by the MDC party to hold its own cabinet and council of ministers meetings in what would amount to virtually a split in the unity government leaving Zimbabwe with two parallel administrations.
The MDC is also unhappy that Mugabe has refused to rescind his unilateral appointment of his supporters to head the central bank and the attorney general's office in breach of the power-sharing agreement that says such appointments should be by consultation.
The former opposition party, which says the charges in question are politically-motivated, says his prosecution of Bennett is a further breach of the unity agreement under which Mugabe undertook to halt all political prosecutions.
The 52-year-old Mr Bennett is a white commercial farmer who was named by Mr Tsvangirai for the post of deputy agriculture minister in the country's power-sharing government.
Mugabe has refused to swear in Bennett to his ministerial post citing the charges against him.
The MDC accuses the attorney general's office - which is fiercely loyal to Mugabe - of conspiring to keep Bennett, whose farm was seized by Zanu-PF loyalists during the country's controversial land reform campaign, out of government.