Editorial Comment: Elections should be the only game in town

It’s providential that a week earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled that by-elections be held in three constituences where ousted legislators had approached the courts.
And with Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa announcing that the by-elections should be held in all 38 vacant constituencies, the stage is indeed set for elections.
We take this opportunity to remind parties to the inclusive Government that they have a chance to bring to an end this coalition that they have variously described as “uneasy” and “dysfunctional” among other epithets.
No one disputes that the inclusive Government, which was originally intended to last for 24 months and to pave way for elections at that, has indeed outlived its mandate.
We hope that with the release of the Copac draft, and regardless of its acceptance or rejection at the referendum, the momentum should be towards elections to give people a government with policy congruence not one which seems to be in a perpetual tug of war.
As they consider the Copac draft, we hope the parties in Government remember a national constitution is essentially a crystallisation of the aspirations of the people of a self-governing territory.
Therein they define their aspirations, ethos, rights and their derogation or otherwise and how they would like to choose and be governed by their elected representatives.
As such the Constitution is the preserve of the people of a specific geo-polity, and outsiders have no role at all to play in such an intimately national exercise.
This is where we seem to have got it wrong as we roped in outsiders among them the UN agency, UNDP, a South African lawyer, the EU and one or two Nordic countries, that were all part of the constitution-making process when, ironically, this is a process that is supposed to lay the foundation for nation-building.
The nation-building process starts with the articulation of the national interests that should be captured in the preamble of the Constitution and run through every chapter.
The Constitution should, thus, define the national vision and map the various strategies that will help attain the vision, as such outsiders have or should have   no role to play in such a sensitive exercise.
The problems encountered in the constitution-making process, manifest in the attempt to smuggle alien concepts and decimate the foundation of the Zimbabwean State, can be traced to the involvement of alien forces.
Already, as we report elsewhere in this issue, there are mixed reactions to the Copac draft.
We, however, contend that if the draft does not dovetail with what Zimbabweans said during the outreach then it should end as just that, a draft that goes no further than the referendum.
We should never lose sight of the fact that a new constitution was never a pre-condition for elections.
We hope there will be no more Copac-related delays to the new elections.
Elections should be only game in town.