The Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai, which signed two memoranda of understanding with Joice Mujuru’s National People’s Party and Welshman Ncube’s smaller MDC, today said it was not at liberty to talk about the memoranda as this would be tantamount to negotiating in public.
MDC-T presidential spokesman Luke Tamborinyoka said in a statement the two memoranda were just the beginning of a process with both current and potential partners.
“As things stand, we are not at liberty to talk about specific MOU issues but to comment generally on the process and the output,” he said.
“Discussions are still on-going both with current and potential partners in the form of political parties and other key networks such as churches, war veterans, students and other stakeholders.
“Suffice to say that the parties that have signed the MOU are at substantive stages of negotiations and once a full agreement is hammered out, a public announcement will be made.”
Tamborinyoka said the MDC-T was also engaging other political parties and the outcome of those engagements would be made public at the appropriate time.
“We are unable to give indicative time-frames at this stage save to say in our party, alliance building is receiving priority attention from President Tsvangirai, in line with the exclusive mandate given to him by the party’s national council to deal with this important matter,” Tamborinyoka said.
“We understand the nation’s anxiety around this process but it must also be understood that we cannot be negotiating in public.
“We are alive to the fact that these alliances are about the people of Zimbabwe and not about the leaders who are engaged in the talks and that is why we keep coming back to update Zimbabweans at the appropriate stages, as we did last week.
“It would be premature for us at this stage to get into the details of the current state of the negotiations after the signing of the MOUs as well as going public about who else President Tsvangirai is negotiating with.
“Going public at every stage of this delicate and sensitive process would be tantamount to negotiating in public and would be disrespectful both to our current and potential partners.”
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