“Power is so sweet that no one wants to leave it” – Paul Mangwana

Paul Mangwana – Zanu-PF Chivi Central legislator and co-chairman of the Constitutional Select Committee – has made the news.  I find this an astonishing article, my emphasis added, and more  via The Zimbabwe Times:

Parliament’s Constitutional Select Committee co-chairman Paul Mangwana of President Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has said the lifespan of Zimbabwe’s current inclusive government will be five years because the majority of legislators across the political divide want to serve their full term of five years.

Mangwana’s disclosure is in sharp contrast to the widely held belief that the duration of the hybrid government was two years, with the specific objective of writing a new governance charter for the country before fresh, free and fair elections are held.

The Zanu-PF Chivi Central legislator warned journalists attending a media workshop in Mutare Thursday on electoral reforms in Zimbabwe that linking the process of making a constitution to elections was attracting resistance to the making up of a new Constitution.

“I have engaged them (legislators) across party lines they still think that we were elected for five years and they want to serve for five years,” Mangwana told journalists attending the Zimbabwe Election Support Network workshop. “That is what is in their minds.”

Mangwana, 48, said power was sweet, and urged journalists not to link elections to the Constitution-making process if they wanted parliamentarians, who have the final say in the adoption of the new Constitution, to support the Constitution-making process.

“Please help us journalists,” he said. “If you link the process of making a Constitution to elections, you are attracting resistance to the making of a new Constitution. Nobody, and I must stress this emphatically, nobody wants to be removed from power. Power is so sweet that no one wants to leave it. I also don’t want to be removed from Chivi Central constituency.

“So if you continue to remind me that I am writing my own removal from power, the chances of me voting for a new Constitution will be diminished. This is across party lines.”

Mangwana said the Constitution-making process must be discussed in the media without talking about elections, “because according to our laws whatever draft we will come up with must be voted into law by parliamentarians.”

“So don’t continue to remind them, although we know that its going to happen, elections will be held in terms of the new Constitution,” Mangwana said.

“But why remind one another all the time? When people are married they don’t want to be reminded all the time the husband comes up and says, ‘You know what, I can divorce you’ or the wife comes up and says, ‘You know what, we can divorce and share the property equally’. All the time we are talking about divorce. It removes confidence in that marriage.”

This entry was posted by Hope on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 11:17 am. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.