News / National
Chinamasa attends AU Peace and Security Council meeting in Addis Ababa
18 Jul 2013 at 22:57hrs | Views
JUSTICE and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa left for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday to attend the 385th meeting of the African Union Peace and Security Council Friday where is he expected to give a briefing on the country's state of preparedness ahead of the July 31 harmonised elections.
Zimbabwe was invited by the AU commission to attend the meeting that will also discuss forthcoming elections in Madagascar, Togo and Mali.
"The Commission of the AU presents its complements to the Embassy of the Republic of Zimbabwe in Addis Ababa and has the honour to inform that the Peace and Security Council will hold its 385th meeting on Friday 19th July at 10am in the Medium Conference Centre, to receive a briefing on preparations for elections in Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Mali and Togo," read the invitation from the AU released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday.
"In light of the above, the Commission would like to invite the Republic of Zimbabwe to attend the meeting. As stipulated in the Rules of Procedure of the PSC, the representative of Zimbabwe will be invited to address the meeting if necessary and will withdraw thereafter to allow the PSC to deliberate in closed session."
Speaking before his departure, Minister Chinamasa said he would articulate Zimbabwe's position on the elections.
"I am going there because I am the minister responsible for elections and the issue is basically about the state of preparedness of Zimbabwe," he said.
"As the responsible minister, I will try to articulate the correct position on Zimbabwe."
Minister Chinamasa said the MDC formations had from the onset of the inclusive Government never wanted to hold elections and had resorted to various mechanisms to frustrate them.
"As you know, the MDCs are merely fronts of external forces, they do the bidding of those countries which have imposed sanctions on us," he said.
"Their idea is that those countries will fund our processes and they will put conditionalities. They will tell us we are not ready and they will tell us we must have our elections in October and that is what Zanu-PF is saying no, no to that."
Chinamasa said Zimbabwe was ready to hold elections as scheduled.
"So we are ready, money will be found, elections will be conducted on the 31st of July without fail.
"Already, all the elements, all the materials that are needed for that exercise are already there. The ballots are being printed, it is not that there is no money, the challenge was the printing capacity. Once that is taken care of, the ballots would be printed.
"The ink has been paid for and what may remain now is the logistics to deploy the ballots when they are ready to their respective polling stations."
Minister Chinamasa said repeated claims by Finance Minister Tendai Biti of lack of funding was a ploy adopted by MDC-T since the formation of the inclusive Government to starve vital national processes of funding to delay elections.
"I do not go along with this singing of the blues about lack of funding. It is done for a purpose, to undermine our processes and the minister of finance should not be doing that, he should not use his official Government position to undermine another minister's functions.
"He should be more creative. All the money that has been raised, I have been forced to almost act like I am a Minister of Finance to raise resources from elsewhere and tell him that there are monies coming to your Treasury when in fact he should be doing that.
"But because of his partisan nature he has not been able to remain functional as Minister of Finance, instead he has decided basically to play partisan politics on national processes. That is wrong, however, there is no problem with our capacity financially or otherwise to hold elections on the 31st of July."
Minister Chinamasa said Minister Biti was still insisting on inviting foreigners to fund local elections and had reiterated the proposal on Tuesday.
Government has, however, rejected foreign funding, saying Zimbabwe has the capacity to run its elections.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has budgeted US$$130 million to ensure the successful conduct of elections.
But the money has been released in drabs and so far US$38,5 million has been disbursed while a further US$20 million is expected to be released today.
Zimbabwe was invited by the AU commission to attend the meeting that will also discuss forthcoming elections in Madagascar, Togo and Mali.
"The Commission of the AU presents its complements to the Embassy of the Republic of Zimbabwe in Addis Ababa and has the honour to inform that the Peace and Security Council will hold its 385th meeting on Friday 19th July at 10am in the Medium Conference Centre, to receive a briefing on preparations for elections in Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Mali and Togo," read the invitation from the AU released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday.
"In light of the above, the Commission would like to invite the Republic of Zimbabwe to attend the meeting. As stipulated in the Rules of Procedure of the PSC, the representative of Zimbabwe will be invited to address the meeting if necessary and will withdraw thereafter to allow the PSC to deliberate in closed session."
Speaking before his departure, Minister Chinamasa said he would articulate Zimbabwe's position on the elections.
"I am going there because I am the minister responsible for elections and the issue is basically about the state of preparedness of Zimbabwe," he said.
"As the responsible minister, I will try to articulate the correct position on Zimbabwe."
Minister Chinamasa said the MDC formations had from the onset of the inclusive Government never wanted to hold elections and had resorted to various mechanisms to frustrate them.
"As you know, the MDCs are merely fronts of external forces, they do the bidding of those countries which have imposed sanctions on us," he said.
"Their idea is that those countries will fund our processes and they will put conditionalities. They will tell us we are not ready and they will tell us we must have our elections in October and that is what Zanu-PF is saying no, no to that."
Chinamasa said Zimbabwe was ready to hold elections as scheduled.
"Already, all the elements, all the materials that are needed for that exercise are already there. The ballots are being printed, it is not that there is no money, the challenge was the printing capacity. Once that is taken care of, the ballots would be printed.
"The ink has been paid for and what may remain now is the logistics to deploy the ballots when they are ready to their respective polling stations."
Minister Chinamasa said repeated claims by Finance Minister Tendai Biti of lack of funding was a ploy adopted by MDC-T since the formation of the inclusive Government to starve vital national processes of funding to delay elections.
"I do not go along with this singing of the blues about lack of funding. It is done for a purpose, to undermine our processes and the minister of finance should not be doing that, he should not use his official Government position to undermine another minister's functions.
"He should be more creative. All the money that has been raised, I have been forced to almost act like I am a Minister of Finance to raise resources from elsewhere and tell him that there are monies coming to your Treasury when in fact he should be doing that.
"But because of his partisan nature he has not been able to remain functional as Minister of Finance, instead he has decided basically to play partisan politics on national processes. That is wrong, however, there is no problem with our capacity financially or otherwise to hold elections on the 31st of July."
Minister Chinamasa said Minister Biti was still insisting on inviting foreigners to fund local elections and had reiterated the proposal on Tuesday.
Government has, however, rejected foreign funding, saying Zimbabwe has the capacity to run its elections.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has budgeted US$$130 million to ensure the successful conduct of elections.
But the money has been released in drabs and so far US$38,5 million has been disbursed while a further US$20 million is expected to be released today.
Source - Zimpapers
