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Midlands Bureau
THE Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC intends to curtail the powers of its secretary-generals whose office has been the source of two splits in the short history of the opposition party, MDC spokesperson, Douglas Mwonzora has said. Mwonzora who was addressing journalists in Gweru on Thursday ahead of an MDC-T’s Midlands South provincial meeting said the restructuring of the office of secretary-general will be simultaneously implemented with that of president as part of an exercise to end the two power centres within the MDC.
He said MDC’s restructuring would come after the adoption of a new constitution at its elective congress in October.
The new constitution will give more powers to the party president, Tsvangirai.
Said Mwonzora: “We are moving around provinces giving our members a roadmap to our National Elective Congress. We have already come up with few subcommittees in preparation for the congress which are national subcommittees that are mirrored at provinces. One of the committees is the constitutional review committee. Every time we have an elective congress we review our constitution.
This year we are going to review our constitution with the view of strengthening our party as the agent of change. This comes after our party went through two splits in 2005 and 2014 and both came from one office which is that of the secretary general”.
Former MDC secretary-general, Professor Welshman Ncube together with the late vice president Gibson Sibanda broke away from the opposition party in 2005 after Tsvangirai refused to participate in the re-introduced senate elections. Prof Ncube formed a new party, MDC-Mutambara and invited former deputy prime minister, Prof Arthur Mutambara to be president.
This year, Prof Ncube’s successor, prominent Lawyer Tendai Biti, split from the MDC-T arguing that Tsvangirai was clinging to power and disrespecting the party constitution. Biti said MDC-T lost the 31 July harmonised elections because Tsvangirai was busy chasing after women while Zanu-PF was busy strategising.
The former MDC secretary-general has since started his own political project, The Renewal Team.
Mwonzora said MDC-T was paying attention to its new constitution regarding how the party could restructure the secretary-general’s office.
He said: “The two presiding secretary-generals of MDC have basically regarded themselves as co-presidents of the party. We need to streamline that without compromising the accountability of the office. What the previous secretary-generals have done was to leave the powers and role of that office vague and as a result their powers overlapped into those of the treasurer, information officer and at times the president.
“We are also going to give the president specific powers and roles. What we are going to do is to retain the powers of the secretary general, making them specific and different from any other office so that we don’t create two centres of power”.
Mwonzora took a swipe at Biti and his cronies describing them as “lawless lawyers” and their political project as “Zanu-PF aligned”.
He said Biti has confirmed to be working with Zanu-PF.
“You might also be interested in knowing that there are two court cases before the High Court, the one of properties that were acquired by MDC but the people who were in charge, the secretary-general and the treasurer registered them in the name of their company and the other of a group of the national council who have also dragged Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma to court for falsifying that they were part of the Mandel meeting which resolved to suspend the party president.
“Biti and his colleagues are lawless lawyers who do not abide by the law or anything after they disregarded the court order when we interdicted them after they sought to discipline president Tsvangirai,” said Mwonzora.
Online Reporter