It is however, the response of the United Nations, which last week refused to grant audience to Tsvangirai’s posturing, that clearly pronounces how "absolutely nonsensical", as President Mugabe recently put it, the MDC-T can become.
The UN Secretary General Mr Ban Ki-moon reminded Tsvangirai that the power of diplomatic appointments resided not with some errant and misguided "executive" somebody but the Government, which clearly has some responsible hand for that.
The Herald
By Tichaona Zindoga
THREE weeks ago, it is to be remembered, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T expressed discomfort with how the constitution outreach programme had panned out, as people had nothing to do with the party’s Western-imported ideals, which include homosexuality.
Tsvangirai and his party spokesman Nelson Chamisa then sought to dispense with the people-driven programme and foist upon the people of Zimbabwe some "negotiated" constitution which would rubbish the voices of about two million people who participated in the over 4 000 meetings countrywide.
Seventy-percent of these voices, it has emerged, were for the values and positions of the revolutionary Zanu-PF party.
The "negotiated" constitution was MDC-T’s way to try to claw back to relevance and give the party, and in particular its leader a modicum of authority which the people had denied him by rejecting his Western imports.
As expected, the ruse was pierced through and rejected.
Then came one Thursday on which Tsvangirai believed he could turn the twin embarrassments on the head.
Not only did Tsvangirai threaten to renegotiate the writing of the new Constitution, but he also sought to renegotiate the Global Political Agreement on which the current inclusive Government is premised.
It was time for the usual boycotts and boycott threats and the "outstanding issues of the GPA", though not so named.
Tsvangirai said he would "refuse to recognise any of the appointments, which the President has made illegally and unconstitutionally over the past 18 months".
This, said Tsvangirai, included the appointments of Governor of the central bank, the Attorney General, judges, ambassadors, the Police Service Commission and provincial governors.
Tsvangirai was also aggrieved that his choice for the post of Deputy Agriculture Minister, Roy Bennett, had not been sworn in.
These issues were long "outstanding" issues of the GPA according to the MDC-T before they were resolved only to be typically resuscitated by Tsvangirai.
Trying to muster some authority and drama, Tsvangirai declared: "As Executive Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe, I will today be advising the countries to whom these Ambassadors have been posted that these appointments are illegal and therefore null and void.
"I will be advising the Chief Justice of the improper appointment of the judges concerned, and that they are therefore null and void. I will be advising the President of the Senate of the improper appointment of Governors, and that they should therefore not be considered members of the Senate, which is therefore now unconstitutional.
"I will be advising the joint Ministers of Home Affairs and the National Security Council of the illegal appointment of the Police Service Commission."
He also called on the "people of Zimbabwe . . . not to recognise these individuals as the legitimate holders of the posts to which they have been unconstitutionally and illegally appointed".
He continued: "I now call upon Mr Mugabe to return the country to Constitutional rule by correcting the unlawful appointments.
I invite Sadc to join me in calling on Mr Mugabe to respect the Sadc Resolutions, the Sadc Charter and Protocols, the AU Charter, and the principles of democracy. "I invite Sadc to deploy observers before the constitutional referendum to help protect the rights of Zimbabweans to express their views freely and without violence or intimidation. And I invite Sadc to urgently intervene to restore Constitutionality in Zimbabwe."
Tsvangirai has since followed up on his pronouncements, having met some diplomats and his party’s affiliates in the Western-funded civic society.
Some members of his party have reportedly also boycotted functions presided over by governors.
It is however, the response of the United Nations, which last week refused to grant audience to Tsvangirai’s posturing, that clearly pronounces how "absolutely nonsensical", as President Mugabe recently put it, the MDC-T can become.
The UN Secretary General Mr Ban Ki-moon reminded Tsvangirai that the power of diplomatic appointments resided not with some errant and misguided "executive" somebody but the Government, which clearly has some responsible hand for that.
The UN admonished that internal matters of a member state did not have to trouble the world body.
"Ambassador Chitsaka Chipaziwa was properly accredited as Permanent Representative of the Republic of Zimbabwe to the United Nations Headquarters in New York on 28 June 2010," advised the world body.
"We will be bound by the letter of his accreditation until advised otherwise by the (Zimbabwe) Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
In effect, the UN told the Executive Prime Minister of Zimbabwe that his "executive" powers resided in the collective Government processes not as in arbitrary activist-like actions meant to serve parochial party interests.
The UN in its wisdom clearly spelt out its distance from internal, administrative issues. And did Tsvangirai, plus obviously his Western cheerleaders, not feel something familiar?
It will be recalled that MDC-T Western friends have tried to nail Zimbabwe at the United Nations (for the benefit of MDC-T at home) only to be rebuffed by the world body.
Ironically, Tsvangirai, the GPA champion, did not find time to write to the same body for the removal of illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by some countries, whose removal the GPA clearly calls for.
Yet regarded solely as media events meant to draw attention, Tsvangirai’s grandstanding, which the UN wisely dismissed, speak of fatuity and flatulence of a confused and moribund political quantity.
Onto the finer details of his statements, his trying to play the Saviour and hero in the setting up of the inclusive Government, which he rambled on in the early part of his speech, was enough to disguise an image of a drowning man clutching at straws.
Unfortunately, quite early in his speech, Tsvangirai did not see the irony of his own situation.
"The MDC utterly rejects the notion of one-party or one-man rule," Tsvangirai said.
He said: "The MDC utterly rejects any suggestion that power is an entitlement through historical legacy, or that power is a God-given right of an individual or individuals…"
It would seem Tsvangirai had forgotten just how he has personalised the faction of MDC to the extent of having it named after him, all of course emanating from the October 2005 split of the singular party when some members rejected his dictatorship.
On the basis of his trade union "historical legacy", he has manipulated every available opportunity to flout his party’s constitution to remain in charge.
Could there be any more evidence of lack of respect for constitutionalism than the recent declaration by party’s secretary general Tendai Biti that Morgan Tsvangirai is the "face of the democratic struggle in Zimbabwe."
SG Biti presumably wrote his boss’ speech in rejection of "one-man rule".
A forthnight ago Biti wrote in The Herald: "Morgan Tsvangirai is the undisputed and unquestionable leader of the MDC and the face of the democratic struggle in Zimbabwe."
This is obviously an affront to the two-term rule that MDC-T so preaches, if Biti seriously believed what he said.
(For, his own ambitions to take the reins from Tsvangirai have not been undisguised.)
When Tsvangirai came to the issue of sanctions, which he of course prefers to call "restrictive measures" he highlighted the folly of his own judgment and failure to place things in the proper context while showing the poor statesman in him.
In a veiled defence of the countries that imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe he said something on how these offending nations were "sovereign" and "independent".
In his wisdom, or lack of it, Tsvangirai did not pause to think of Zimbabwe’s own sovereignty and independence, which entitles it to freedom from outside manipulation, restriction and sanction.
Tsvangirai did not even consider that his favoured sovereign and independent states had worked outside of the mandate of the UN, making the sanctions illegal at international law.
But Tsvangirai was not finished
"All Zimbabweans," he declared, "know that Mr Mugabe and his colleagues brought the restrictive measures on themselves through the flagrant abuses of human rights and the economic disaster which they inflicted on this country."
He said that "all" Zimbabweans knew that these restrictive measures were "the result, not the cause, of that economic disaster" and these restrictive measures affected the individuals concerned, not the country as a whole.
A pertinent question has been asked in trying to expose this sophistic rigmarole.
Namely, if Robert Mugabe had brought enough ruin to the country by his policies, why would such benevolent countries as Tsvangirai’s sovereign and independent friends impose sanctions on every other productive sector of the economy?
And is it being seriously suggested that "all Zimbabweans" have forgotten Tsvangirai asking some countries to impose sanctions on the country and to cut economic and political ties, to "put pressure" on President Mugabe?
The said pressure, Tsvangirai knows, was in the form of a humanitarian disaster that these sanctions wrought on ordinary people, which would in turn force an abdication on President Mugabe’s part.
Tsvangirai even told people at a rally to brace for such a humanitarian situation.
Yet away from the delusional world of Tsvangirai and those who indulge him, the world continues to move on.
With the UN reminding Tsvangirai to behave his age, Tsvangirai and whosoever choreographed the hollow move should be an embarrassed lot.
This episode rather paints pictures of dogs barking at passing wagons, what with the history of boycotts associated with Tsvangirai and his party.
The announcement of the provisional dates for the referendum, setting the stage for all Zimba-bweans (in the real sense) to assert their wishes and aspirations only seem to amplify the images.
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