General booted from Zim constitution body

MeddlingIn May, Nyikayaramba caused controversy when he said Mugabe should remain in office for life and called for elections to be held this year, claiming that Mugabe’s Zanu-PF would sweep the vote.Tsvangirai’s MDC party has previously accused the army of meddling in politics and rigging polls.Nyikayaramba was not immediately available for comment, but he told the state-run Herald newspaper that donors were behind his dismissal.”The reason they don’t want me there is because they want to smuggle in things that are a security threat and they are afraid that the military personnel will see it and block it,” Nyikayaramba said.”They want to use this constitution for regime change like what they did in Ivory Coast… They did it though the constitution,” he said.”They [donors] want to influence the outcome of this process and as a country we can’t allow them to do that.”Work on Zimbabwe’s long-delayed constitution again stalled on Monday after Mugabe’s party complaining of a “stalemate” in compiling opinions gathered during months of public outreach.Public outreach on the constitution began in 2009 after the unity government was sworn in, but has been repeatedly disrupted and marred by violence.