Zimbabwe’s three governing parties failed to find common ground on presidential powers and proposed security reforms in the new constitution at a crucial conference to review the charter that ended on Tuesday 23 October. President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party wants an overhaul of the draft constitution produced by an inter-party parliamentary committee claiming Zimbabweans favoured an all powerful Head of State and government. After two days of deliberations, Zanu-PF and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations in the inclusive government failed to narrow their differences.

The 2nd All Stakeholders Conference got off to a dramatic and chaotic start in Harare on Monday, with the MDC-N leader Welshman Ncube walking out of the event, to protest the presence of Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara. At the heart of his protest is the fact SADC leaders resolved at the last summit in Maputo that Ncube would be the third principal allowed to participate in GPA negotiations. But ZANU PF went against SADC and insisted Mutambara would remain the third principal to participate in government business.

Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by a recent wave of arrests of journalists in Zimbabwe and urges the authorities to stop trying to intimidate independent privately-owned media and to take measures against those responsible for physical attacks on reporters. 'This sudden wave of lawsuits and incidents involving the police does not bode well for the coming months,' Reporters Without Borders said. 'Journalists must be guaranteed the freedom to cover political stories without fear of abusive criminal prosecutions. We are very worried about the judicial harassment of independent journalists and media in the past few weeks.'

Zimbabweans are showing the evidence of having been torn in all directions in the transitional period. They have been scarred by the party political wars since the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from late 2000 onwards first posed an electoral challenge to the Zimbabwe African National Union? Patriotic Front (ZANU?PF). Zimbabweans, as represented in this stratified?random and nationally representative sample from Freedom House, are not sure it seems on what to believe and how to relate to political and economic circumstances.