Chinamasa should spare us his kindergarten economics

When MDC President  Morgan Tsvangirai told his supporters in Highfield on Saturday that Zanu (PF) no longer has capacity to resolve the current crisis in Zimbabwe he had not read Patrick Chinamasa's article in yesterday's Sunday Mail in which he confirmed just that.

The second-rate lawyer who is out of his depth as the Minister of Finance is now talking about reversing reforms that took the best part of the four years of the inclusive government to pass through national constitutional consultations, because he has no money to put the necessary commissions in place!
Instead of looking for ways to raise the money to implement policies that were agreed nationally as the solutions to Zimbabwe's long-standing problems, Chinamasa is reported in yesterday's Sunday Mail saying that changes will have to be made to agreed Constitution because the present government has no money.

Only four sections of the new constitution would not be re-opened for discussion, and from what we can tell, only those sections which Zanu (PF) was most vociferous about putting in the constitution - the ones dealing with the country's founding values and the like.

And this is all being done unilaterally by Zanu (PF), yet the constitution was negotiated and passed by stakeholders from all sectors of the Zimbabwean society in a process which gave legitimacy to the current government in the eyes of the region.

Because the Constitution that was passed calls for "a huge public payroll" Chinamasa says the Cabinet has mandated the Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare and Finance portfolios to recommend amendments for cutting the number and size of statutory commissions and Parliament.

Was Chinamasa and Zanu (PF) not aware of the shrinking revenues when they were carrying out their industry-hostile policies that have now seen 92 percent of government revenue going to recurrent expenditure.

They are so daft that they do not realise that it is not the expansion in independent commissions due to the constitution, but the shrinking of revenue due to company closures, and no new investors are coming into the country because of their corrupt indigenisation policies.

Besides, who gave the Zanu (PF) Cabinent the right undo was done by the whole country in the constitutional consultative commission which established the Electoral, Human Rights, Gender, Media, National Peace and Reconciliation, Land and Anti-Corruption Commission?

Currently only the Media and Electoral Commissions are manned, if a bit functional. Eight other commissioners are still only on the books as no provision has been made for them, nor have provincial and metropolitan councils been catered for in terms of appoints nor in terms of providing budgets for their secretariats and offices.

According to the Sunday Mail article Chinamasa is also considering reducing the number of National Assembly Representatives  ostensibly to trim the public payroll. If this, cutting government departments and "never borrowing for recurrent expenditure"  becomes the default response to lack of funds, then we can easily foresee the government closing down.

From reading Chinamasa's statement one would think that Chinamasa has just discovered  that the bloated bureaucracy is not sustainable and that  the number of legislators is disproportionate to Zimbabwe's population, yet these are issues the MDC-T has been bringing to the fore since Zanu (PF) was elected.

It is grossly incompetent for Chinamasa to say that since he became Minister of Finance  he had only now become aware that the new constitution would bring about a bloated bureaucracy which is not sustainable.  

His job as finance Minister is to ensure that there are sufficient resources to meet government programmes by implementing policies that will make that possible.

Instead he is trying to rationalise incompetent decisions by saying that it was the Constitution that created the new institutions, so  the Constitution must be amended to normalise the situation.   

Forgive us Minister but this is kindergarten economics, and spare us the talk of sovereignty. Anyone who reads your statement would agree with us that the you and your government have run out of ideas and should simply resign since you don't know what you are doing.

Makusha Mugabe - Information and Publicity Secretary MDC-UK and Ireland