Posted on 12/10/2003 12:11:48 PM PST by Clive
Harare - Uproar broke out in Zimbabwe's parliament on Wednesday as government and opposition MPs debated the country's withdrawal from the Commonwealth.
Through a barrage of interjections from MPs of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and repeated demands for order from speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa, Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge opened debate by dismissing criticism of issues of human rights and democracy and declaring that the decision was taken in preference "to being treated as a lackey."
He called Australian prime minister John Howard "the butcher of Baghdad" and Commonwealth foreign secretary-general Don McKinnon "the liar."
An enraged President Robert Mugabe made the decision on Sunday night, immediately after he was told that the Commonwealth summit in Abuja, Nigeria, had decided to continue indefinitely the government's suspension from the 54-member body.
On Tuesday Mugabe's cabinet approved withdrawal from the 54-member body of mostly former British colonies.
Both cabinet and parliamentary endorsement have to be given for the pull-out to be legally effective, lawyers said.
Mudenge also said that Commonwealth membership brought no benefits, and said that scholarships and preferential visas for subjects of Commonwealth nations were "as good as dead" as "(former British prime minister Margaret) Mrs Thatcher did away with all that."
About 100 000 Zimbabweans have fled to Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand in the last four years of economic and political mayhem and secured residence there on the strength of being Commonwealth citizens, many of them on scholarships provided by the "club."
Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party has a comfortable majority in the 150-seat legislature, although party officials had to broadcast orders over state radio today to its MPs to attend parliament, in an apparent bid to avoid previous embarrassing defeats by the MDC when ruling party MPs didn't bother to turn up for debates.
MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube praised the Commonwealth's decision to extend Zimbabwe's suspension, but said that Mugabe's response "shows his determination to maintain dictatorship, violation of human rights, and denial of people's democratic rights."
Zimbabwe was suspended in April last year, after Commonwealth election observers reported that Mugabe's victory in a presidential ballot a month before was the result of violent intimidation and fraud.
The Commonwealth secretariat said shortly before the Abuja summit that Mugabe's government had done nothing since the suspension to merit having it lifted.
The government has since attacked the Commonwealth as an "imperialist" body controlled by "the racist white Commonwealth."
The committee recommending the suspension was openly backed by East and West African, Caribbean and Pacific nations, as well as India.
I've been following the Zimbabwe situation for maybe 2 years, and I've always thought it'd be over "within 6 months." That said, I guess I still feel that way....
That was my prediction 18 months ago.
I have ceased making any predictions about any changeover. All of them on the Mugabe dole are suffering from some kind of delusion. Or they're all afraid of each other and the various subplotting that must be at work.
Ususally, these situations are resolved by middle ranks in the officer corp of the Army.
That's what my guess would be.
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