HARARE - Movement for Democratic Change, MDC led by Welshman Ncube has launched a ‘‘Yes’’ vote campaign to the new draft constitution.

The launch comes hardly a week after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC also launched its ‘‘Vote Yes’’ constitutional campaign at a rally held at the Harare Show grounds.

Edward Mkhosi, constitution select committee (Copac) co-chairperson for Ncube’s MDC told the Daily News his party was now on the move, holding rallies countrywide in support of the draft constitution.

“We are going to be campaigning for our supporters to vote "Yes" in the referendum and I am going to be holding a rally in my constituency, Mangwe this weekend.

‘‘I know that some of our party national executive members and legislators will be doing the same in their respective constituencies, at different times,” said Mkhosi.

Mkhosi added that they had been holding informal meetings with supporters and members of the public in their constituencies on the draft constitution and encouraging them to vote ‘‘Yes’’.

“As a party we are on campaign trail in support of the draft constitution. Whoever tries to defuse this process will face the wrath of people who have spoken and given what they wanted during the outreach programme,” he said.

“Zanu PF faces the same risk of what happened in 2000 when the draft constitution was rejected by the people and we don’t want the repeat of scenario so we are campaigning for a yes vote.”

MDC formations have joined hands with other civic organisations like Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza) who have endorsed the draft constitution. They are all demanding a referendum and new constitution.

Paul Mangwana, Zanu PF’s Copac co-chairperson dismissed the launch of the ‘‘Yes vote’’ on the draft constitution by the MDC formations as “politically mischievous”.

“Tsvangirai and Ncube do not have the legal mandate to call for the referendum, it is only President Robert Mugabe who can do that,” he said. “As Zanu PF we can only start to campaign after we have been informed by our Principal. It is wrong for MDC to campaign ‘‘Yes’’ when we have nothing to talk about so far about the draft since it is under discussion.

“As of now we don’t know if the Principals can break the deadlock and if that does not happen, the whole process will collapse and we shall go into elections with the Lancaster Constitution.”