via Tsvangirai continues to douse fire. 23 September 2014
THE opposition MDC-T’s national council has endorsed plans to expand its standing committee from 13 to 15 members to accommodate party members angered by the rejection of other proposed sweeping constitutional changes in the leadership structure.
The surprise move came soon after the rejection of the Morgen Komichi led-constitution review proposal that sought to centralise power around the person of party leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Had the sweeping changes been adopted, Tsvangirai would have ended up with executive powers to appoint all the members of the standing committee except the vice-president and national chairman.
National organising secretary Nelson Chamisa yesterday defended the expansion of the standing committee, saying one of the two new posts would be filled by a direct vote at congress while the other one would be appointed at the recommendation of the national council.
“It is true that we have added two new posts in the standing committee and these are secretary for elections and deputy secretary for information and publicity,” Chamisa said.
He added: “The deputy secretary for information and publicity will be elected directly by the congress while the secretary for elections will be appointed at the advice of the national council based on the expertise and skills of the person.”
Originally, the standing committee had 13 members, 11 of whom were elected at congress plus the youth and women assembly officials who got in as ex-officio members.
The 11 contested posts were president, vice-president, national chairman, deputy national chairman, secretary-general and deputy secretary-general.
The others were treasurer-general, deputy treasurer-general, national organising secretary, deputy organising secretary and the secretary for information and publicity. The congress, which comes six months after the party suffered a second split in a decade, will see strong jockeying for the secretary-general and treasurer-general’s posts. These were left vacant after Tendai Biti and Elton Mangoma formed a splinter group, MDC Renewal Team.
COMMENTS
A welcome move as long as it was done in consultation with the majority. Try to avoid further conflicts and surely you’ll be unstoppable! Embrace principles of democracy as you’ve always been doing.
Boring irrelevance. Pamberi mob justice street barricades
In all relevance to this discussion a true democratic party would by now have a binding constitution that can not be tampered with. This shows all how inconsistent our so called political parties are
pamberi na Morgan naChamisa ne MdcT Pamberi
Mr Nyoni, I respect your opinion, however, we should know that a constitution is made stronger by circumstances which warrant amendments, eg the zimbabwe constitution had a lot of loopholes which were strengthened by certain experiences.Mdc is a young party which was formed hurriedly and some issues might have been overlooked.Zanupf split during the war because of the powerful secretary general, after independence Edgar Tekere was booted out of Zanupf because of the power exerted by the secretary general post that he held.So power and influence should be decentralised to all positions in the party.