Zimbabwe envoy’s Royal Wedding invite ‘mind-boggling’

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

THE British media has criticised an invitation extended to Zimbabwe’s ambassador to Friday’s Royal Wedding, as it was revealed the country’s two most recent Prime Ministers were SNUBBED.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown will not be among the 1,900 invited dignitaries filling the Westminster Abbey in London, but Gabriel Machinga will be at the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

“It is not merely unclear but mind-boggling that Messrs Blair and Brown should have had to yield to men such as Gabriel Machinga, Zimbabwean Ambassador to London, a loyal servant of President Robert Mugabe’s murderous and kleptomaniac regime,” fumed Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover.

Glover said it was “highly regrettable” that Blair and Brown had been overlooked while “some pretty unsavoury foreign leaders, as well as some rackety private individuals” got invites.

Newspaper reports are highly critical of invitations extended to King Mswati III of Swaziland, Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, the Crown Prince of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohamed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz and Princess Fadwa bint Khalid. The Bahrain Crown Prince has, however, declined the invite to escape controversy while Libya’s ambassador had his invitation rescinded.

In a news report, The Independent newspaper said: “Despite Zimbabwe having withdrawn from the Commonwealth in 2003, and Robert Mugabe being subject to a travel ban and sanctions, Zimbabwe’s ambassador to London, Gabriel Machinga, remains on the guest list because the two countries retain ‘normal’ relations.”

St James’s Palace has defended the wedding list, insisting that the Foreign Office had approved it.

The Palace said that all heads of mission in London have been invited as a matter of course. Diplomats and heads of state are invited by the Queen rather than the royal couple, the Palace added.

Blair and Brown were not invited, according to Palace officials, because they are not members of the Order of the Garter. But the snub has drawn anger from Labour MPs, especially after it was revealed that two former Conservative Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major did get invitations.

“Once the Crown appears to be taking sides — and that is the impression, if not the intention — our delicate constitutional arrangements are imperilled,” opined the Daily Mail’s Glover.

-New Zimbabwewp_posts