Morgan Tsvangirai - power-sharing - Zimbabwe

Tsvangirai threatens to quit power-sharing deal

Sunday 12 October 2008

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has threatened to pull out of a power-sharing deal with Robert Mugabe following the Zimbabwean president's unilateral decision to award key cabinet posts to his ruling ZANU-PF party.

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai threatened Sunday to pull out of a power-sharing deal if President Robert Mugabe pushed ahead with his decision to allocate key ministries to his party.
   
"If they (ZANU-PF) do it that way, we have no right to be part of such an arrangement," Tsvangirai told a rally in Harare attended by about 8,000 of his his supporters.
   
"The people have suffered. But if it means suffering the more in order for them to get what is at stake, then so be it. We will renegotiate until an agreement is reached but that does not mean we will compromise for the sake of it," he said in a mixture of his native Shona and English languages.
   
"We had thought that they would be reasonable and equitable in power-sharing. If you say all the 15 ministries which are key are mine (referring to ruling ZANU-PF), we (in the MDC) disagree," he said.
   
Talks on implementing a stalled September 15 power-sharing agreement in Harare were branded dead in the water Sunday by opposition leaders soured by Mugabe's weekend unilateral decision to award key posts to his ruling party.
   
Chief mediator in the talks, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, will on Monday in Harare seek to hold discussions with each of the three parties which signed up to the power-sharing accord.