It may be difficult to believe but on Monday next week, the MDC would have been in government for 100 days. On Tuesday the Prime Minister will address Parliament and on Wednesday he will launch the next 100 day programme at the International Conference Centre in Harare.
The day before that he will address Parliament for the second time and give the country an overview of what has been/has not been achieved in the first quarter of the two year Transitional Government. I expect the next election will be about June 2011 and we have therefore 10 quarters of this arrangement of which the first has come and gone.
I was a part of the 'transition team' established by Morgan Tsvangirai in January 2008 when it was expected that we would win the March election. As everyone knows we did win but were again denied the right to rule because of fraud and the regional community. So when we eventually did get a deal - over the dead body of the South African President, it was a rather nasty compromise that tied us to Zanu PF in a close embrace that is not appreciated by either Party.
Secretly each of the two Parties looks over the shoulder of the other towards the 2011 election and thinks only of what they have to do to win. For Zanu PF it is quite simple - hold onto what they have left and no compromise on anything that might ease their grip on the electoral process. So they have spent the past three months simply stonewalling the MDC in all the critical areas linked to the electoral process. They have no wish to demonstrate who plays the best cricket, they feel they just have to filibuster the MDC until they get to the point where they can go into an election where the same mix they have used to win and hold onto power for 30 years can be brought into play. First prize for them is the collapse of the GNU, second prize is a flawed election that they can win in 2011.
These areas of conflict have become labelled by Tendai Biti as the 'toxic issues', described as such because of their potential to destroy the GNU and undermine the success of the transitional government.
On the part of the MDC we have sought to make the deal work and to try and get the situation in the country back to normal - whatever that is! So you have seen the Prime Minister leaning over backwards to accept his Zanu PF colleagues as such and to work with and not against the President. While we have stuck with the demand that the GNU be fulfilled in full and in spirit, Zanu PF has simple refused to back down on any issue that might threaten their hold on what remains of their State power.