The MDC has resolved to go ahead with its elective Congress scheduled for the 24th to 26th of May this year.
Spokesperson, Jacob Mafume, told the Newsday that the party’s lawyers advised them to proceed regardless of a recent High Court order which instructed them to hold an extraordinary Congress. Said Mafume:
Our lawyers have advised us to proceed as we are doing and they will also be taking care of the needs.
It will be the first after the unfortunate demise of our icon (party founding leader) Morgan Tsvangirai. We are ready and the council took note of the legal issue which was left to our lawyers to deal with.
The party intends to appeal the High Court ruling, though this has not yet been done.
Meanwhile, the party has decided to set up an independent commission to look into grievances by party members who lost during provincial nominations.
Mafume also revealed that some of the officials who lost during the nominations will be co-opted into provincial structures. He said:
As you know, every administrative process has to be internally reviewed, has to be internally audited and in keeping of the rule of the law and democratic tenets, we wanted to make sure that anyone who had complaints, no matter how big or small, they had an opportunity to present them before the independent commission.
The commission looked at the complaints and validated the provincial elections and it is essentially our appeals committee.
It encourages certain provinces to integrate those who would have lost so that we can continue, some of them had some concerns that we felt we needed to keep capturing their leadership within the provincial set up.