‘Next target for MDC is a new constitution’

By Tichaona Sibanda
29 March 2006

The Secretary-General of the MDC Tsvangirai led faction, Tendai Biti, said on Wednesday no opposition party in Zimbabwe can win elections under the current constitutional and legal regime.

Biti said the next great challenge facing his party after the restructuring exercise is to work towards having a new constitution that can guarantee free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.

Speaking after the appointment of the party’s shadow cabinet on Wednesday Biti said people must not get over excited about elections as long as the country sticks with the constitutional and legal regime that currently exists.

‘For as long as we don’t have an independent electoral commission and for as long as we have a delimitation commission that keeps on meandering constituency boundaries and for as long as we have a civil servant in the form of Tobaiwa Mudede running elections in the country no opposition party can win elections in Zimbabwe,’ he said.

Therefore the challenge said Biti should actually be what is the party and what are democratic minded Zimbabweans doing to ensure there is a new constitution that can guarantee free and fair elections.

The party appointed its shadow cabinet on Wednesday, almost completing its restructuring exercise. After the election of the new top leadership two weeks ago at the congress, the party completed elections for national executive and Portfolio secretaries this past weekend.

‘This is a team that should be given a chance, it’s a team that is causing sleepless nights to the geriatrics that are at State House,’ said Biti.

The other challenge facing the MDC was restoring the institutional administrative arm of the party based at Harvest house, which the secretary-general compared to a ghost house after last year’s split.

‘The whole of Harvest house is a ghost, we need to restore the institutional dignity of that house and we also need to ensure that we have the full complement of staff to kick start things there.’