Monday 1 August 2016

Swiss Ambassador warns of dire consequences if Zim does not implement reforms NOW! By Patrick Guramatunhu


“ZIMBABWE must combat corruption, facilitate a clear legal framework for investments and uphold the rule of law for the country to extricate itself from the current economic and political crisis, Swiss Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Ruth Huber, has said,” reported New Zimbabwe.

“Switzerland is also assisting with the alignment of laws to the 2013 Constitution, and facilitating dialogue platforms between stakeholders in the country around negotiation, mediation and consensus-based nation-building.”

Could not agree with the Ambassador more on everything except on the issue of aligning existing laws to the 2013 constitution, this is just a waste of time and resources.

The 2013 constitution grants excessive dictatorial power to the State President to hire and fire Zimbabwe Election Commissioners (ZEC), senior members in the Police, Army and CIO, Judges, etc. without any of the usual democratic checks and balances, for example. With all the best will in the world there is real very little anyone can do to stop the State President, if he/she so wished, appointing party loyalists who will in ZEC and all the other state institution who will  then turn a blind eye to corruption, vote rigging, etc.

Zimbabwe’s political reforms demands the implementation of the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement signed by President Mugabe on behalf of Zanu PF and by Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara on behalf of the two MDC factions and SA’s President Thabo Mbeki on behalf of SADC as the guarantor. Sadly, none of the reforms were ever implemented during the GNU hence the reason President Mugabe was able to blatantly rig the 2013 elections and land us in this political paralysis and economic mess!

Only the full implementation of the GPA democratic reforms will extricate from the present political and economic crisis.

Unemployment has soared to 90%, up to 76% of the country’s population now lives in abject poverty and hopeless despair, etc. The strain of the economic hardship on people and nation is clear for all to see if the social bonds snapped the country will sink to civil unrest or worse. The elasticity limit of the people’s patience has been exceeded a long time ago, the risk of the country sliding into mindless violence and chaos is real.

“In order to convince our Head Office which shapes our position in the Boards of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), we need to see concrete reform steps being approved and implemented,” said Ambassador Huber.

“This includes a commitment to combat corruption, to facilitate a favourable legal framework for investments and ensure the rule of law.”
Zimbabwe’s worsening economic situation is a ticking social time bomb and the need for the country to implement the democratic reforms and defuse the bomb is now the most urgent matter for this nation.

10 comments:

  1. The need to implement meaningful democratic reforms, have free, fair and credible and move the country away from the knife edge is clear to see for anyone with eyes and a perceptive mind. The very fact that we are where we are with 90% unemployment rate; 76% living in abject poverty; rampant corruption in which a few individuals loot $15 billion, which is nearly five times the country’s collected state revenue; etc. is proof those is positions of power and authority are guilty of criminal negligence and waste.

    The country’s economic infrastructure is in such an advance state of decay and rot it is going to take decades and a lot of toil and treasure to get it back to what it was in 1980. As a nation, we cannot escape taking some of the blame for having allowed Mugabe and his thugs to drag the country into this mess. We are extremely lucky that the nation has not descending into serious rioting or worse in protest against the subhuman conditions many of our people are living under today.

    It is sad that outside can see the dangerous situation we are in and not us as many of our people continue to live in their comatose state oblivious of the reality that surround them!

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  2. Our friend says he is in UK, it has not occurred to him why they left Zimbabwe to go to the corrupt West. Most Zanu PF apologists are outside the country already, they could not bear the economic hardships; they only continue to defend the regime because they have loot to protect and, in many cases, a dirty past they do not want the world to know.
    My guess is Shoko has very little or no loot, his greatest fear is all the innocent blood he has shed in the name of Zanu PF. He thought he would be rewarded for it but got nothing.

    President Mugabe is renowned for getting people do his dirty work for him and then discard them with little more than a piece of meat and scud beer. He has been careful to keep the lion’s share of the looted wealth for himself and his family and then distribute the leftover to his cronies and their families. People like Shoko have waited for 36 years but got nothing just like the rogue war veterans now confronting Mugabe. Vana Moses Shoko ndivana pafembwa, pafembwa!

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  3. You are really itching for a fight and will stop at nothing until you see blood on the floor! You continue down this path and you will get your fight alright, the tragedy is many innocent lives will be lost just to gratify your lust for blood!

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  4. Mujuru attend Mahiya’s bail application hearing together with other opposition leaders like Nelson Chamisa.
    Mujuru's shameless support of known thugs like Mahiya is clear sign she has not changed one bit, she will deploy these rogue war veterans just as Mugabe has done to secure and consolidate her own tyrannical rule!

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  5. War veterans can fight their war with President Mugabe, they must know that they betrayed the ordinary people and therefore will never ever have the sympathy of the nation.

    They made a dirty pact with the devil, President Mugabe; they agreed to betray the people and deny them their freedom, human rights including the right to free and fair elections and even the right to life to deliver Mugabe’s no-regime-change. In return the tyrant promised the war veterans economic prosperity but never delivered. When the war veterans complained about it the tyrant tear-gassed and hosed them down with water cannons – a kick in the teeth!

    Mugabe promised the people economic prosperity, freedom and human dignity but failed to deliver and when the people tried to exercise their democratic right to a meaningful vote so they remove the tyrant from office it was the war veterans who took it upon themselves, for selfish gain, to deny the people the free vote and thus impose the corrupt and tyrannical regime on the nation.

    War veterans signed a pact to support the tyrant and betrayed the people and now that the tyrant is kicking the war veterans in the teeth surely they must not expect any sympathy from the people they have brutalized all these years. The war veterans are getting their just reward for their treasonous betrayal of
    innocent people!

    Only the opportunist opposition leaders, who have never cared about the ordinary people anyway, would sympathize with these
    rogue war veterans; no doubt they would want to draw with the rogue war veterans an new devil’s pact to harass and beat people but for Zim PF, MDC-T, etc. instead of Zanu PF! We now know these opposition party are not for democratic change but for the removal of one dictatorship to replace it with another.

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  6. We must never forget that these rogue war veterans have commited serious crimes against this nation. Mugabe may be arresting them for his own selfish reasons but that does not change the fact that these are criminals in every sense of the wird!

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  7. Hold your donkeys you half wit! MDC failed to implement even one reform during the GNU to stop Zanu PF rigging the last elections. You are a sell-out now masquarading as a caring politician.


    You were in court because you would like these rogue war veterans to be fighting in your corner now that they have fallen out with Zanu PF. We are fighting for free, fair and credible elections and not not perpetuate the evil of vote rigging and tyranny.

    F*%&k off Chamisa.

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  8. This is the kind of grade one myopic politics that has landed us in this mess!

    1) If Mai Mujuru had not been kicked out of Zanu PF in 2014 she would have been on the regime's side cheering and applauding.

    2) Chamisa and his MDC friends sold-out during the GNU by failing to implement the reforms.

    3) Mahiya and his rogue war veterans thugs are the ones who have kept Zanu PF in power by denying the people the vote.

    4) Both Mujuru and Chamisa were in court to woo the rogue war veterans to join them so that can beat and intimidate povo to vote for Zim PF and MDC-T respectively.

    Only a naive and first class idiot would not see what is going on here and thus take us from one dictatorship into another. We want freedom, human rights, free and fair elections, etc. We are not going to get these things by electing corrupt and incompetent leaders especially when we already know that they are corrupt and incompetent!

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  9. I agree with you 100% that Mugabe is a corrupt and murderous thug but I do not have to remind you that many of us once thought him a great leader and we followed him.

    I do not also have to remind you that millions of Zimbabweans also thought Tsvangirai was a great leader and he would deliver us from the tyrant Mugabe. He did not although he had the chance to do so during the GNU.

    Mawarire is offering the same simplistic solutions Tsvangirai offered that will get us nowhere. That is why I am asking Mawarire and those following him where are you people going?

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  10. MDC is a party of corrupt and incompetent individuals who let the nation down by failing to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU but I notice that is a manor issue to you the appointment of two additional VPs is the big issue to you.

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