Copac downsizes thematic committees

same time extending the thematic committee stage by 10 days.
Copac co-chairpersons, Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana (Zanu-PF) and Mr Edward Mkhosi (MDC) in separate interviews on Thursday said the changes had been caused by the need to engage people who were fast at typing to capture every contribution.
“We realised that most people, especially political representatives, cannot type fast. We therefore decided that we need technical people who will be able to capture data.
“We are reducing the number of political representatives from about 700 to 300.
“We are looking at increasing rapporteurs, especially those who were there during the outreach programme because they are familiar with the process,” Cde Mangwana said.
Mr Mkhosi said: “Some of the people we had were very slow when typing. We are trimming to a serious working group. We want people with technical orientation because we want to make sure that every contribution is captured and this can only be possible if we have people who can type fast.”
The co-chairpersons also said the three parties crafting the constitution had agreed on using both qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods.
They criticised political bickering that characterised the stage saying it had affected the process.
“After a lengthy discussion, we agreed that we should use both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysing data. We will also have to go back to those places where we had used one method to implement the other method.
“We wasted so much time and money bickering over methods of analysing data and this affected the rhythm,” Mr Mkhosi said.
He added that the committee had also agreed that analysis would no longer be venue-based but ward-based.
He said this would mean that there would be no disparity between rural and urban meetings.
Cde Mangwana said: “We have to restart with the new format. It is unfortunate that we lost money arguing over issues that had already been settled.”
Thematic committee meetings were last week stalled after the two MDC formations disagreed with Zanu-PF over the methodology to use in capturing views gathered during the constitutional outreach programme.
Zanu-PF supported the quantitative method while the MDC formations argued that the method would culminate in the dominance of Zanu-PF views.
The thematic committee meetings are supposed to produce reports that would be used as a basis for writing the draft constitution.