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Its Parliament time in Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwe Parliament is set to open after five months of inactivity following the March 29 elections.

The parliament was dissolved before the March 29 elections and the new Members of Parliament had to wait for just under five months to be sworn in to the new parliament.

Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC won the Speaker of Parliament post with Lovemore Moyo becoming the first non Zanu PF MP to be elected speaker.

Zanu PF did not enter a candidate for the speaker's post but instead choose to vote for MDC Mutambara's candidate Paul Themba Nyathi. I don't think for the MDC Mutambara faction to survive it needs Zanu PF support but its good that the majority of the MDC Mutambara faction choose to vote for Moyo instead.

That should tell Mutambara that he may try to align himself with Mugabe but the majority in his party may not favour that and its something that he needs to correct now because I don't think that the majority of his 10 MPs are suddenly going to go with Zanu PF now when they have opposed it all these years.

I suppose had Nyathi won, Zanu PF would have asked for a favour next time from MDC Mutambara having helped their own to be speaker and its good it did not work.

The interesting thing is that Zanu PF is now the opposition party but MDC cannot be called the ruling party because Robert Mugabe still remains president.

With the talks stalling these are going to be some interesting weeks for Zimbabwe. With the way things are at the moment, Mugabe will have to choose a new cabinet from his party which for the first time no longer enjoys the majority that it has had a monopoly on for the last 28 years.

The problem is that not much will be achieved by this new parliament unless some sort of deal can be reached between Tsvangirai and Mugabe. Zimbabwe cannot afford to waste any more time now with the economy now in total ruins but at the same time Zimbabwe cannot afford a deal which gives Mugabe total control of power because he has had it for all these years and now look where he has taken the country.

I am beginning to lose hope in the current mediation process being done by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa but unfortunately as it stands now its hard to see if there is another option. The mediator should have been replaced in the first place but that did not happen and now looks like a real messy.

You cannot allow a situation where the people of Zimbabwe continue to suffer even more until the whole system breaks down and so I hope a compromise will be reached soon to get the country back on track.

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