Zimbabwe’s coalition partners have reached a deadlock on the appointment of the central bank governor and the country’s attorney general, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has said.
Addressing journalists at a press conference in Harare Tsvangirai said: “There are two key issues on which the principals failed to reach an agreement, the governor of the Reserve Bank and the attorney general.”
The Global Political Agreement (GPA), which was signed on 15 September, states that the parties agreed that the appointment of senior government officials such as permanent secretaries, ambassadors, the leaders of government would consult and agree before such appointments are made.
“The Reserve Bank governor and the attorney general are senior government officials and yet in breach of the Memorandum of Understanding and the GPA and the Reserve Bank Act, the incumbent RBZ governor (Gideon Gono) and attorney general (Johannes Tomana were appointed by president Mugabe on 27 December 2008. In light of the deadlock, the principals with the support of their parties will now refer this matter to SADC as the guarantors of the GPA. We trust that SADC will deal with this matter with the urgency it requires,” said Mr Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai said governors will be sworn in soon, and that deputy minister for agriculture nominee Roy Bennett will be also sworn in together with the governors.
He said the list of permanent secretaries announced in the state media Thursday was premature because the principals had agreed that all the outstanding issues would be announced at the same time.
“That announcement was premature because the agreement was that all the issues should be announced as one. I don’t know ho this has transpired that they have been announced in piecemeal. Any civil servant who participates in party politics has no future in the civil service,” he said.
On ambassadors, Tsvangirai said the coalition partners had agreed that the two MDC formations would submit list of names of members to be trained as ambassadors for appointments at the same time an audit will be conducted to identify opportunities for further appointments.
“Five ambassadorial vacancies available will be filled by the two MDC formations, MDC T four and MDC M one,” said Tsvangirai.