News / Press Release
MDC-T dissociates itself from the so-called COPAC National Report
23 Dec 2011 at 13:08hrs | Views
The Movement for Democratic Change and the Parliamentary Select Committee completely dissociate themselves from and completely dismisses the so called national report published in The Herald.
The report purports to be a Copac report yet it was not Copac that instructed The Herald to publish this report. The official position at Copac is that the national report on the constitution making process is not yet complete and will only be made available to the people of Zimbabwe once it has been completed.
The minutes to that effect were signed to by all three co-chairpersons of Copac, Douglas Mwonzora, Paul Mangwana and Edward Mkosi.
It is now imperative to advise the nation that there is no agreement regarding the formatting of this report. However there is a standing agreement that any report containing the people's views must have both the quantitative and the qualitative aspects of the outreach data. In other words the data must contain what the people said and the circumstances under which they said those things.
At no point did the Select Committee submit any report to The Herald. No member of the authorised Copac staff submited any report to The Herald. It there is clear that this report is a Zanu PF document written and submitted by the faction of Zanu PF that is fighting against the drafters in the constitution making process. It appears that this is the work of some individuals who are panicking about the possible outcome of the drafting process.
The MDC reiterates that this report is not authentic for the following reasons.
a. There is no Select Committee resolution for the publication of any report. In fact the Select Committee position is that the National Report is not yet complete.
b. The so called report purports to show the support of the various issues by ascribing a percentage figure to each issue. That way the authors wanted to give an impression that certain issues enjoyed the support of the people of Zimbabwe more than others. This is clearly fraudulent. No voting was conducted on any issue during outreach. No people were counted. Therefore how can the authors of the report purport to show figures indicating support of a thing? How did they arrive at those figures?
c. A Copac report would show where exactly particular information was obtained. This report does not do so. A Copac report would also show the atmosphere of each meeting or group of meetings. For example a Copac report would show that there was violence or that the atmosphere was peaceful. This report does not do so. It pretends that all meetings, if any were peaceful. Zimbabweans know that this is false.
d. From the reading of the report it appears that the information written was obtained in the wards in Zimbabwe. This means that this report does not contain the views from the Diaspora, institutional submissions, institutional submissions, people living with disabilities and views from members of parliament.
It is common cause that Copac obtained views from these sources besides the public meetings. In so far as it completely omits information from these critical sources it can not purport to be a Copac document.
e. This so called national report does not include the " list of constitutional issues" extracted from the outreach documents by the technical team that included, Mr. Masimirembwa and Mr. Mudenda of Zanu PF nor does it include the list of agreed constitutional principles drawn by the Select Committee and approved by the management committee.
f. Fraudulently, the authors of this report want to use frequencies to show the popularity of an issue. Yet frequency in the Copac sense refers to the number of meetings at which a thing was mentioned and not the number of people who supported the issue.
The so-called report is fake. At the last meeting of Copac it was found that the drafters had done nothing wrong and that they should proceed with their work. The drafters advised us that they were taking a Christmas break and would resume work on the 3 rd of January 2012.
The reports that the drafters were stopped from work are completely false. The drafters are not going to draft the constitution using the national report but are going to use the extracts of constitutional issues given to them by the Select Committee.
The report purports to be a Copac report yet it was not Copac that instructed The Herald to publish this report. The official position at Copac is that the national report on the constitution making process is not yet complete and will only be made available to the people of Zimbabwe once it has been completed.
The minutes to that effect were signed to by all three co-chairpersons of Copac, Douglas Mwonzora, Paul Mangwana and Edward Mkosi.
It is now imperative to advise the nation that there is no agreement regarding the formatting of this report. However there is a standing agreement that any report containing the people's views must have both the quantitative and the qualitative aspects of the outreach data. In other words the data must contain what the people said and the circumstances under which they said those things.
At no point did the Select Committee submit any report to The Herald. No member of the authorised Copac staff submited any report to The Herald. It there is clear that this report is a Zanu PF document written and submitted by the faction of Zanu PF that is fighting against the drafters in the constitution making process. It appears that this is the work of some individuals who are panicking about the possible outcome of the drafting process.
The MDC reiterates that this report is not authentic for the following reasons.
a. There is no Select Committee resolution for the publication of any report. In fact the Select Committee position is that the National Report is not yet complete.
b. The so called report purports to show the support of the various issues by ascribing a percentage figure to each issue. That way the authors wanted to give an impression that certain issues enjoyed the support of the people of Zimbabwe more than others. This is clearly fraudulent. No voting was conducted on any issue during outreach. No people were counted. Therefore how can the authors of the report purport to show figures indicating support of a thing? How did they arrive at those figures?
c. A Copac report would show where exactly particular information was obtained. This report does not do so. A Copac report would also show the atmosphere of each meeting or group of meetings. For example a Copac report would show that there was violence or that the atmosphere was peaceful. This report does not do so. It pretends that all meetings, if any were peaceful. Zimbabweans know that this is false.
d. From the reading of the report it appears that the information written was obtained in the wards in Zimbabwe. This means that this report does not contain the views from the Diaspora, institutional submissions, institutional submissions, people living with disabilities and views from members of parliament.
It is common cause that Copac obtained views from these sources besides the public meetings. In so far as it completely omits information from these critical sources it can not purport to be a Copac document.
e. This so called national report does not include the " list of constitutional issues" extracted from the outreach documents by the technical team that included, Mr. Masimirembwa and Mr. Mudenda of Zanu PF nor does it include the list of agreed constitutional principles drawn by the Select Committee and approved by the management committee.
f. Fraudulently, the authors of this report want to use frequencies to show the popularity of an issue. Yet frequency in the Copac sense refers to the number of meetings at which a thing was mentioned and not the number of people who supported the issue.
The so-called report is fake. At the last meeting of Copac it was found that the drafters had done nothing wrong and that they should proceed with their work. The drafters advised us that they were taking a Christmas break and would resume work on the 3 rd of January 2012.
The reports that the drafters were stopped from work are completely false. The drafters are not going to draft the constitution using the national report but are going to use the extracts of constitutional issues given to them by the Select Committee.
Source - MDC-T
