2014 MDC camps may need mediation

TWO camps have emerged from the MDC-T 2014 structures following the mooted Supreme Court ruling for the MDC-T 2014 structures to organise an extraordinary congress to elect a replacement for the late MDC founding president Morgan Tsvangirai.

Each of the two camps has held a meeting which is supposed to be a council meeting, and each of the camps has called its rivals' meeting unconstitutional. Where then do we go from there? There may be valid reasons for either camp to call the other camp's meeting unconstitutional, and I will try to analyse the basis of their reasoning.

Regarding the meeting chaired by senator Morgen Komichi, this in my view was unconstitutional and a violation of the Supreme Court ruling which requested the party to go back to its 2014 structures.

The chairman in 2014 was Lovemore Moyo, and by jumping out of the court room armed and masquerading as the reinstated chairman, Komichi violated the Supreme Court ruling. He wanted to make the world believe that he was the reinstated MDC-T national chairman, which was a lie. He must not get away with murder.

Fortunately, Komichi says he is a reformed man and has been asking for forgiveness for the "crimes" he made in propelling Nelson Chamisa to the presidency. By the same token, he should re-tract his usurping of the powers of the reinstated 2014 MDC-T chairman. Everything he has done under that false claim is unconstitutional, null and void.

For the record, the 2014 chairman Moyo resigned from the party on March 2018 after Tsvangirai's death, and the Supreme Court advised the party to revert to its 2014 structures. Furthermore, that the meeting did not constitute a quorum if the attendance figures reported in one of the weeklies are anything to go by.

The meeting held at Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House (formerly Harvest House), reportedly constituting a quorum, has been rubbished as unconstitutional by Douglas Mwonzora, Komichi and Elias Mudzuri. If council meetings can only be called by the chair and secretary-general in terms of the MDC constitution, then this was also not a properly constituted MDC-T council meeting, and therefore the decisions made do not bind as council resolutions. However, even outside a council meeting, the MDC seems to allow at least two-thirds of council members to petition the standing committee to call for a council meeting, and probably having realised that the May 21, 2020 meeting was not acceptable to the reinstated secretary-general who was, indeed, invited and responded explaining himself, it seems appropriate that the individual council members are still entitled to calling on the standing committee to call a legitimate council meeting, and I am glad they did so.

As a paid-up member of the party in 2014, I will communicate through the appropriate channels that this council meeting that has been proposed should address the penalty that should be meted on Komichi for publicly declaring himself the reinstated 2014 national chairman before discussion was made to establish whether the reinstated chairman was willing to accept reinstatement, in which case he as the deputy chair could take over; the meeting should also discuss the penalty deserving to the reinstated secretary-general Mwonzora for withdrawing MDC Alliance legislators before the appropriate organs of the party had discussed that intention.

I will use this opportunity to further reiterate that at law, the MDC Alliance is a registered entity in accordance to the law and its legislators cannot be recalled by another entity.

Parliament acted prematurely to entertain the request by Mwonzora before the extraordinary congress was held. The recalled legislators must be reinstated immediately as their re-call is not something contained in the Supreme Court ruling.

Serious mediation may be appropriate at this stage to ensure the affected parties discuss the Supreme Court ruling, and the parties to discuss it are the 2014 MDC-T structures who have a role to play, firstly to accept the process suggested by the Supreme Court or to appeal against the decision, and then take the necessary steps that should be taken in line with the party constitution. Because the two camps that have emerged are very divided, I suggest the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, which gave birth to the MDC, or some other body acceptable to the two camps, mediates to ensure that reasoning pre-vails in the process of implementing the Supreme Court judgment with-in the confines of the party constitution and the interests of the crucial stakeholders, the genuine delegates to the proposed extraordinary congress.