Harare - Another MP of Zimbabwe coalition Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic change has been jailed in what the former opposition party says is a plot by President Robert Mugabe to erode the MDC's majority in parliament with fake charges, officials said Friday. MP Meki Makuyana was sentenced on Thursday in the magistrate's court in the south-eastern town of Chipinge to an effective year in jail on charges of public violence, said Pishai Muchauraya, MDC spokesman in the eastern Manicaland province.
Lawyers were Friday lodging an appeal against the magistrate's decision.
Makuyana is one of seven MDC MPs in the province to have been prosecuted since the country's power-sharing agreement was inaugurated in February, and the third to have been jailed for terms long enough to ensure they lose their seats in parliament, should they lose their appeals.
The MDC has a majority of one over ZANU(PF) in the 210-seat house of assembly.
Human rights lawyers point out that not one MP of President Robert Mugabe's ZANU(PF) party has been prosecuted despite the fact that the party's MPs were known to be major driving forces of the wave of violence ahead of the bloody run-off presidential elections in June last year in which about 200 MDC supporters were murdered and thousands were tortured, severely injured and lost their homes.
Mugabe's victory was dismissed by international observer groups as the result of a violent fraud.
Under the agreement between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, police, judiciary and attorney-general all remain under the control of staunch ZANU(PF) cronies.
"These charges are all trumped up," said Muchauraya. "It's a ZANU(PF) strategy to frustrate us and reduce our numbers. It shows you cannot work with ZANU(PF)."
Two weeks ago MP Shua Mudiwa was given a seven-year sentence on charges of kidnapping a 12-year-old girl. Before that, Mathias Mlambo was jailed for 10 months for "public violence," while woman MP Lynette Karenyi has escaped with a 20-US-dollar fine following allegations of forging electoral papers.
Still facing trial are the MDC's popular white national treasurer Roy Bennett, on allegations of plotting sabotage and terrorism, and MP Trevor Saruwaka, on charges of public violence.
Bennett is the MDC's deputy minister of agriculture-designate but Mugabe has refused to swear him in. He was arrested hours before he was to be sworn in in February and spent three weeks in prison as state lawyers and prisons officials ignored court orders for his release on bail.
Observers say an indication of the political pressure exerted on the judiciary came when a magistrate was arrested by secret police for carrying out a high court judge's order to effect Bennett's release on bail.
