Bagbin Wants Govt to Take a Hard Stance On Mugabe

The Minority Leader, Hon. Alban Bagbin is not amused with the manner President John Agyekum Kufuor has so far handled the Zimbabwean political crisis.

According to him, he "expected President Kufuor to chastise President Mugabe" rather than resorting to "diplomatic language" and describing the ignominious acts of Mugabe against his opponents as merely an "embarrassment".

To him the lenient stance of the Kufuor administration on the Zimbabwean Government amounts to backtracking on Ghana's foreign policy of promoting justice and growth of democracy on the African continent.

Bagbin was commenting on a statement presented to Parliament by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and NEPAD, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on the African Union (AU) and related matters on Ghana's foreign policy and President Kufuor' AU chairmanship.

Hon. Bagbin expressed his gratefulness to other African leaders for conferring the AU Chairmanship on Ghana saying that the position has not been conferred only President Kufuor but to the nation as well.

On the forthcoming AU Summit, which is expected to test Ghanaian's diplomacy to the limits, Hon Bagbin said the nation must do all it can to stabilize the energy and water problem before this important international assignment.

He advised that appointees in charge must put their acts together and not be caught pants down like we did when "we were planting grass during the dry season before the highlights of the Golden Jubilee celebrations when people did not have water to drink".

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai have been at each other's throats, leading to the rest and battering of the opposition by the police

Mr. Mugabe sees the activities of Tsvangirai and his MDC as conspiracy by his opponents and Britain to remove him from power.

In response to the condemnation by certain leaders Mugabe says he would not desist from the process of giving the people their land back; the essential message is to defend the land reforms and farm seizures that have occurred in the past two years.

But Mr. Tsvangirai claims his party wants an integrated society - black, white, yellow, whoever. "This is the principle that the people themselves have defined. That our problems do not arise out of the mischief of whites or any small group; our problems arise out of misgovernance, corruption and lack of investment and creation of jobs. So that is the basis upon which people are defining their issues. Whether Mugabe defines it in his own paranoid obsession about whites, that' s his problem it's not our problem."

Mr. Tsvangirai says the MDC has been at the receiving end of the terrorist actions of Mugabe's administration, not that they have initiated anything to warrant those kinds of labels. " MDC is one that has maintained peace in this country. "We have maintained peace in this country otherwise it would have blown out of control."

For past 12 months Mugabe has accused the MDC of waging a terror campaign, backed by British intelligence, to destabilize Zimbabwe. No one has taken the claims seriously. Internationally, the focus has been on the violence and terror being created by pro government Zimbabweans are grappling with the world's highest inflation - 1,700% a year - while unemployment and poverty are widespread.