Minister of Foreign Affairs, Honourable Dr I S G Mudenge

PRESS STATEMENT BY THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
DR I S G MUDENGE, ON THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE COMMONWEALTH CHAIRPERSONS' COMMITTEE ON ZIMBABWE

The conclusions reached by the Commonwealth Chairpersons' Committee on Zimbabwe in London on 19 March 2002 to suspend Zimbabwe from the Councils of the Commonwealth for a period of 12 months, are fundamentally flawed, and undermine the credibility of the Commonwealth, as well as the principles and practices developed through the Harare and Millbrook processes. For this reason, the Government of Zimbabwe rejects these conclusions, and calls upon all Member Countries to give urgent and active attention to the hijacking of the collective will of the Commonwealth to serve the hostile intentions of a few.

At CHOGM in Coolum, Australia, the majority of member countries refused to take any action against Zimbabwe inspite of the negative pre-election Report compiled mainly by the Secretariat staff component of the Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) at the instigation of the British authorities. The members wanted COG to base its recommendations on its own observation of the actual election campaign, voting and counting and not on hearsay.

The composition of the said Commonwealth Observer Group was heavily influenced by the Secretary-General and those member countries who harbour well-known negative dispositions and hidden agendas against Zimbabwe. A glaring flaw was the latitude given to member countries to reflect their biases and predipositions through the selection of persons of known anti-Zimbabwe disposition to the COG. Some of these observers indeed had publicly condemned Zimbabwe's Presidential elections before they had even arrived in the country to observe them e.g. Mr Kevin Rudd from Australia. Such known biased individuals should not have served on COG. It is therefore not surprising that COG reached the negative conclusions on the Zimbabwe Presidential elections.

The conclusions of COG are diametrically opposed to the observer mission reports of the OAU, SADC Ministerial Task Force, COMESA, Nigeria, South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, DRC, China, Russia and Iran, among others, all of which endorsed the polls as either free and fair or legitimate or reflecting the will of the people of Zimbabwe.

There was no outright consensus on the conclusions of the COG by all of its members. Yet this fact was suppressed in the statement of the Chairman of the Troika.

The COG claims that "We have reported what we have seen." (Page 46). This is false. In fact the Report covers a period of nearly twenty two years. The Report is largely about what the group read or was told by the MDC, the British Government and such other hostile sources. It is selective and one-sided. It deliberately suppresses vital public information on the massive British and some EU countries' funding of the MDC over the last two years and of the anti-Government daily pirate radio broadcasts from London and Holland before and during the election campaign; the recorded and published British government's destabilisation activities against Zimbabwe over the period reviewed by the Report are covered up, the barrage of anti Government propaganda by the international media led by the BBC is not even mentioned, while the bellicose samber-rattling by the British government and its allies in order to intimidate and frighten the people of Zimbabwe into voting against President Mugabe and for the MDC hardly finds a line in the report. All these threats were publicly uttered including threats not to recognise the presidential results if President Mugabe won. What was the impact of all these actions on the people of Zimbabwe? And what countervailing actions should the government of Zimbabwe have taken?

It is this selectivity and manipulation of the information which undermines the integrity of the COG and renders the so-called recommendations worthless. The decisions of the Troika are therefore impaired by the faulty nature of the COG Report itself.

On our part we want to assure Zimbabweans and our friends that the Government is proceeding resolutely with its irreversible programme of land restoration under its newly re-elected President H E Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe who is serving his third six-year term as President in accordance with the laws and constitution of Zimbabwe. The next presidential elections in Zimbabwe will be held in six years time.