MDC-T claims on cabinet leaks absurd

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By Prof. Jonathan Moyo

SENSATIONAL weekend media reports alleging that the MDC-T is outraged by what it claims are damaging leaks to the press of cabinet papers in advance of their formal discussion in the highest policymaking body of the State raise worrying questions about the apparent dishonourable conduct of some Cabinet Ministers and about the continued lack of collective purpose and direction for the sake of the struggling masses in the inclusive government almost six months after its formation.

The cabinet documents that are alleged to have suffered damaging leaks this week are (1) Comments and Suggested Alterations on the Cabinet Handbook from the Prime Minister’s Office and (2) the draft Information and Communication Technology Bill from Minister Nelson Chamisa’s office.
It is notable that the supposed damage of the alleged leaks of these two documents has been assumed and not indicated beyond fanciful claims that the leaks smack of agenda-setting by a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity who was said to behave as if he is a government minister.

While there is no prize for guessing that the senior civil servant in question is George Charamba, if one were to make an objectively reasonable and thus justifiable guess as to the source of the incendiary allegation reported by the Zimbabwe Independent on Friday about an alleged row over damaging leaks of cabinet documents to the public media, the money would have to be on Minister Chamisa who was quoted by the paper as having refused to comment on the allegation and yet he was readily willing to tell it that: “I can’t comment on cabinet matters. Call the Minister of Media, Information and Publicity”.

Minister Chamisa is the only MDC-T cabinet member who was mentioned and quoted by the Zimbabwe Independent and he also is the minister responsible for the ICT Bill which is one of the two documents that are alleged to have been leaked to the public media.

For these rather compelling reasons, even a doubting Thomas would see Minister Chamisa’s fingerprints throughout Friday’s lead story in the Zimbabwe Independent.

But is there any merit to the sensational allegation that the two documents that were allegedly leaked to the public media are in fact cabinet documents? The answer is a definite no.

Minister Chamisa’s ICT Bill is not a cabinet document and the good minister knows that because he has not submitted it to Cabinet but has been peddling it around in donor-funded public seminars and conferences convened to gather sectoral support for the provocative if not sinister Bill. It is also a matter of the public record that the ICT Bill got some extensive but inappropriate and controversial political mention in Minister Tendai Biti’s mid-term budget speech last week.

As such, the ICT Bill has been everywhere but to Cabinet. MDC T sources familiar with this matter say that Minister Chamisa’s office sent the ICT Bill to the Minister of Media, Information and Publicity, Webster Shamu, only last week on July 16 for his perusal and comments. This was on the same day when Minister Biti went to town in Parliament in favour of a Bill that was not yet before Cabinet and was therefore not a cabinet document officially drafted by the Attorney General’s Office in the usual manner.

In the circumstances, how then can a document with such a public history be even remotely considered as a secret document and how can it be leaked when it is already in the public domain by courtesy of its promoter? It is cynical and mischievous in the extreme for anyone in the MDC T, let alone Minister Chamisa, to seek to settle their personal or political scores with civil servants who cannot politically defend themselves by using anonymity in the media and abusing the cover of cabinet secrecy to falsely accuse a civil servant of leaking a document whose origin and life has been in the public for some time now. It is always cheap and quite despicable for a Cabinet Minister to engage a Permanent Secretary in a public wrangle.

What Minister Chamisa needs to know is that a paper or Bill does not become a cabinet document simply or only because its promoter is a cabinet minister. Imagine a situation where cabinet ministers want the Press to treat their bounced cheques, failed university term papers or groceries to their small houses as protected cabinet matters. There is more to a cabinet document than that.

In fact, Minister Chamisa needs to know that what is critical and confidential to Cabinet are its deliberations and decisions not necessarily what comes before it because some if not most of what comes to Cabinet is in fact public material not least because we all live under the same sun and there is really nothing new below it.

Beyond this, Minister Chamisa needs to know that what has shocked the public about his ICT Bill is that it seeks to amend laws and to affect operations which are outside the control of his ICT ministry, notably Media, Information and Publicity as well as Transport and Infrastructural Development, without the necessary consultation with and agreement of those ministries.

It has never happened before that a Government Minister recklessly and arrogantly encroaches into the portfolios of other ministers and seeks to make laws for them in the manner Minister Chamisa is doing through his totally unacceptable and indefensible ICT Bill.

Even well-meaning or neutral observers cannot avoid the inevitable conclusion that Minister Chamisa is up to big time mischief and he needs to be stopped in his tracks for that reason and that reason alone.

Then there is the second equally false sensational allegation that the paper on Comments and Suggested Alterations on the Cabinet Handbook from the Prime Minister’s Office is a cabinet document that has been leaked for the first time this week to the public media.

This is false because the document in question, by the admission of the Prime Minister’s office, as reported in Friday’s Herald, has not been submitted to Cabinet.

As a matter of fact, this document is a working paper of the Council of Ministers which is not and cannot be Cabinet by any stretch of the political imagination not least because its composition does not include the President and the two vice presidents.

Besides, while Cabinet is by law the highest policymaking body in government, the Council of Ministers is by the same token only a policy implementation body from an oversight point of view.

The two, Cabinet and the Council of Ministers, are therefore quite different.

While what is before Cabinet is necessarily confidential in terms of what is discussed or decided what is before the Council of Ministers is not because it is supposed to be about what is already out there in the world of implementation. Policies are implemented in the real world and not in the Cabinet room.

The Council of Ministers is intended by the Constitution to be a report back forum to take stock of how government policies are doing.

Unfortunately, in a rather misguided attempt to cover up the fallout from the shocking intent and provisions of his ICT Bill, Minister Chamisa appears to be throwing mud all over the place and is operating behind the scenes to present the paper on Comments and Suggested Alterations on the Cabinet Handbook from the Prime Minister’s Office as an allegedly leaked Cabinet document only for purposes of marketing public confusion and masking his ignorance of how Cabinet and indeed Government itself functions.

The MDC-T comments on the Cabinet Handbook are a public secret that has been moving from one computer to another like a virus. There is nobody in political society who has not seen those comments.

For this reason, the claim that the leakage of the document is damaging is not correct because nobody, including the vilified senior civil servant in the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity, can leak a document that is already circulating on email.

But the paper on Comments and Suggested Alterations on the Cabinet Handbook from the Prime Minister’s Office is damaging in two notable respects whose consequence may explain why some MDC-T ministers like Mr Chamisa are now running scared.

In the first place, the paper is written under the auspices of the Council of Ministers which it seeks to falsely present as either equal to or even above Cabinet.

This is of course a misguided attempted civil coup and the damaging aspect of the paper arises from the fact that, following the exposure of the paper in the public media this week, the whole world now knows that the MDC-T has a secret civil coup scheme to strip Cabinet of its powers.

In the second place, the publication of the provisions of the paper by the Herald has exposed the unhappy and dangerous fact that, rather than concentrating on the implementation of service delivery policies to support the urban and rural poor, the MDC T is abusing the Council of Ministers in a futile exercise to change the Constitution of Zimbabwe and grab political power by rewriting the Cabinet Handbook.

Yet the structure of the inclusive Government and the powers and functions of its officers, such as that of the Prime Minister, are clearly delineated in Constitutional Amendment Number 19. The Cabinet Handbook is an administrative document based on the Constitution and the laws of the land.

It is hopeless for the MDC-T to seek to change those powers and functions, or even to revisit the Global Political Agreement of September 15, 2008 through a Cabinet Handbook or any other Handbook for that matter.