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| author/source:Zim Online (SA) |
| published:Fri 13-Jan-2006 |
| posted on this site:Fri 13-Jan-2006 |
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| Article Type : News |
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| The party's meeting could not be allowed to proceed because the proposed venue for the meeting had been booked "by other people for a week" |
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Zvishavane - Zimbabwe police have banned a planned campaign meeting of the country's newest opposition party, the United People's Movement (UPM), giving its leaders a taste of the repressive security laws they helped enact while they were members of President Robert Mugabe's government. One of the fledgling UPM's top executives, Pearson Mbalekwa, said his party had notified the police of a planned meeting on Tuesday this week at a community hall in the Nil section of Zvishavane, a mining town more than 400km south-west of Harare. Mbalekwa said the police had verbally responded, telling UPM officials that the party's meeting could not be allowed to proceed because the proposed venue for the meeting had been booked "by other people for a week." "We re-scheduled our meeting for the 13th (today) but permission was denied," Mbalekwa told Zim Online yesterday. Mbalekwa is a former Member of Parliament (MP) for Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party while one of UPM's chief architects, Jonathan Moyo, was government minister of information and also a non-constituency MP.
Mbalekwa left Zanu PF in protest against Mugabe's controversial urban clean-up campaign that left at least 700 000 Zimbabweans without shelter and means of livelihood after the government demolished shantytowns and informal business kiosks. Moyo was fired from the government and Zanu PF after he successfully stood in last year's parliamentary election as an independent. Both politicians had however strongly supported the enactment of the Public Order and Security Act that bans Zimbabweans from gathering to discuss politics in groups of three or more without first seeking approval from the police. Although police verbally told UPM officials that the party's meeting could not go ahead because the proposed venue was already booked, a letter written to the opposition party by a police superintendent P Madondo, states that the reason the meeting was being banned was because the party was "not yet officially registered." "This is a clear case of political interference by the police who misinterpret the law on behalf of the government," Mbalekwa said. UPM is campaigning for an independent candidate, Tawanda Musavengana, in the forthcoming local government elections. Musavengana had registered as an independent for the local government polls before joining the UPM.
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