Finance Minister Tendai Biti told Parliament yesterday that the country did not have money for elections, due in just over a month, and accused Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Mines Minister Obert Mpofu of blocking efforts to raise the money.
Chinamasa was blocking efforts to get money from donors while Mpofu was refusing to surrender money from diamonds.
Biti said that if he had the power he would shoot Mpofu to get money from diamonds which he estimated at US$1 billion- $800 million from last year and $200 million in the first quarter of this year.
The Finance Minister said though he was now beginning to sound like a broken record on an old gramophone, the fact was that the country had no money for elections.
He had been to the United Nations, to the Southern African Development Community and to donors but they were not willing to put their taxpayers’ money into a process that was going to fail.
“No-one wants to put money in a black hole. So people are saying, donors are saying and SADC is saying that, we want to see guarantees that this will be a sustainable election because we do not want to fund something that is going to be a false election like the June 28 (2008) elections for instance, which everyone will question. We will have put our hard earned money into a dustbin,” Biti said.
“So, the question of the legitimacy and credibility of this election is also going to determine whether we can attract money from donors or anyone else which is why the current discussions about the Proclamation, the legality, the legitimacy and the credibility of an election on the 31st of July, 2013 have become so central because no one will put money in something that is so self-evidently going to fail.
“That is where we are. We do not have money but if we put our house in order and if we work together particularly, if Minister Chinamasa was to be able to come on board and abandoned the newfound streak of insanity, we can do it.”
Biti said Zimbabwe could not go the route it raised money for the referendum -borrowing US$40 million from Old Mutual and the National Social Security Authority because it had dried up the banking sector as the smaller banks depended on borrowing money from NSSA and Old Mutual.
“We cannot do what we did on the referendum, it is out of the question. The only thing that we can do to raise money and if that money can come now, we do not have to go to anyone to ask for money, is if Hon. Obert Mpofu can be honest enough to give money from diamonds to the budget,” Biti said.
“He is not doing that. It is an issue that I am now a broken record. Last year we sold diamonds worth US$800m. We should have gotten US$400m from that and we got US$43m. This year in the first quarter we have sold US$200m, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to guess what came to the Treasury – zero, two bhobho, two bhobho. Nothing came to Treasury.
“To get money from Hon. Mpofu, I do not have super powers to order Hon. Mpofu. I wish I had because I will shoot him – to get money from diamonds. It requires political will from the leader. Unfortunately, that is not coming.”
Biti said the country needed political will and to speak with one voice to raise money for the elections but right now the country did not even have a government.
“Ever since the Proclamation, the bottom line is that there is no government in Zimbabwe. It is there normatively. It is there de jure but de facto it is not there. It is a complete breakdown. It is complete chaos and anarchy and that the donors are also watching.”
Zimbabwe’s election date is not clear yet as SADC asked the government to ask the court for a postponement.
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