Resolution writing and a little on Zimbabwe

We are now up and running with writing our resolutions for the final EAMUN conference and have attempted to narrow down our topics as much as possible, from ex. Economy to focusing on infrastructure. What poses as a difficulty though, is writing a resolution asking for aid that will result in something beneficial for the country and essentially Africa too, whilst trying to do so from the perspective of the government in question. When the country comes with a background of corruption for example, is there a risk in asking for support in building up democratic institutions through this subtle confession of the fact that things like corruption exist? Might it increase the credibility of the government, or weaken it – leading to a denial of support in other fields such as the building up of infrastructure?

 

On another but quite similar note, it is really interesting to observe what’s going on in Zimbabwe at the moment. The fact that Mugabe and Tsangvirai  as of September 15^th officially share the power, with Mugabe as the president and Tsangvirai as the prime minister has weakened the criticism of Mugabe from the international community. At the same time however, this act of democratization has also paved the way for an even bigger acquisition of power from his behalf. Because now that he is seen as a man striving towards a democratic Zimbabwe who has thus been cut some slack from the int’l community, what is stopping him from abusing the power once again? In other words, perhaps a step towards democracy was a step counteracting democracy? Take for instance the fact that Tsangvirai wasn’t able to attend a recent peace conference simply because Mugabe denied him travel papers on time. In my opinion, this is not a new era in the sense that Zimbabwe will begin to blossom, but rather the beginning of an era filled with symptoms of the underlying problem in Zimbabwe. There are unfortunately not an ample amount of solutions… While the last initiative to end turmoil and violence in Zimbabwe played on the establishment of a democratic state, the new initiative needs to go further than that. I think the ‘final’ solution will need to be sparked through creating African unity and a feeling of companionship. For no matter how ‘weak’ it may sound, it might only be then that politicians of other African nations, despite what kind of ties they have with Mugabe and his party, see to the sake of the people of Zimbabwe and use their current suffering as the force triggering them to put pressure on Mugabe to allocate more power to his opposition party as well account for the democratic progress to the international community.

 

/Charlotta Pühringer