Sadc snubs MDCs

Sadc has not invited the MDC formations for its summit in Lilongwe, Malawi, this weekend but MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai is understood to be making frantic efforts behind the scenes to gatecrash the meeting.

Government sources told our Harare Bureau on Thursday that an official invitation was only extended to Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces President Mugabe, who left Harare for the summit yesterday.

President Mugabe is emerging from a resounding electoral victory that saw Zanu-PF pocketing a two-thirds majority in Parliament. "Officially, there is only one invitation for His Excellency. If the MDC formations were invited, they were invited outside the official channels," the source said.

Reports emerging from Malawi say Zimbabwe would not be on the agenda of the summit.

Sadc director of Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation Mr Tankie Mothae, told reporters in Lilongwe on Wednesday that Sadc was happy with the country's electoral process.

He told an international news agency, Bloomberg on Wednesday that; "as Sadc we are happy with the electoral process" but went on to add that member states were free to raise concerns if they had any issues with the elections.

However, addresing journalists in Harare yesterday, MDC-T spokesperson Mr Douglas Mwonzora, confirmed his party was not invited to attend Summit, but was taking "a dossier detailing how Mugabe's Zanu-PF party rigged the elections".

The party's Vice President Thokozani Khupe and other party officials were already in Malawi by yesterday trying to drum up support for the MDC-T.

Mr Mwonzora said the party would still present the dossier either formally or informally in fulfillment of South African President Mr Jacob Zuma's request to the party to bring forward any evidence of vote rigging.

He said the party would also inform the regional grouping that had been mediating in Zimbabwe's politics since 2008 about the hiccups they were encountering with their poll petition.

The MDC led by Professor Welshman Ncube has ruled out taking the electoral issue to Sadc saying the bloc had already pronounced itself on the matter.

Addressing senior party officials from Matabeleland regions in Bulawayo recently, Professor Ncube also indicated that the MDC would not be taking any legal action like the MDC-T opting rather to go back to the drawing board and mobilise support for the 2018 elections.

"The party has discounted the option of taking the dispute to the regional and continental organs principally Sadc and the AU. These institutions have already made known their views about the process and outcome of the election. That they have already pronounced satisfaction with both the process and outcome of the elections signifies the futility of taking that course of action with any hope of getting a positive intervention," he said.

Last week Sadc chairperson and Mozambican President Armando Emilio Guebuza announced the removal of Zimbabwe from the summit's agenda.

"Your victory and that of Zanu-PF in a landslide manner at the 31st July 2013 harmonised and Sadc rules-based elections create the conditions for striking your great country out of the Sadc Agenda, as a stand-alone political item," said President Guebuza in his congratulatory message to President Mugabe.

The MDC-T and its NGO supporters have gate crashed many Sadc meetings and in some cases have been ejected from crucial regional meetings.