FIGHT OVER GOVERNORS

President Mugabe has a new crisis on his hands. The terms of office of the country's 10 provincial governors has expired. The MDC has found this out and is kicking a stink. The governors terms expired at the end of July, making the their positions vacant.

“The Provincial Councils and Administration Act provides that each term shall not exceed a period of two years hence their terms expired on 31 July 2010 and the ten former fovernors have no legal basis to act as being still in office,” an MDC spokesperson said in a statement.

He said in terms of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, new governors should be appointed following consultation between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Tsvangirai.

The appointment of the provincial governors has already been one of the issues at the centre of a long-running dispute between Tsvangirai’s MDC and ZANU PF led by Mugabe.

The posts have been a cause for acrimony since the unilateral appointment of ZANU PF officials to the position of governor by Mugabe in breach of a memorandum of understanding signed with Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara of a breakaway MDC faction in July 2008.

The dispute over these appointments almost derailed the formation of Zimbabwe’s transitional government before the Southern African Development Community intervened and instructed the parties to come up with a formula for the representational allocation of the governors.

The parties subsequently agreed to share the positions on 5:4:1 formula, with Tsvangirai’s party getting the largest number of posts, followed by ZANU PF and Mutambara’s faction.

Mugabe has until now refused to appoint the MDC governors, insisting that he wanted the current terms of the incumbent officials to run out.