In an
interview, senior policy analyst Marion Tupy of the Washington-based Cato
Institute for Global Liberty and Prosperity said in Tsvangirai the West was betting
on a wrong horse. The West have since learnt the lesson and they now expect Zimbabweans
too to have learnt the lesson and look for an alternative opposition leader.
"It's
true that the West has abandoned Morgan Tsvangirai its very sad but it's very
true. It's like putting your money on a horse in a race hoping that he wins and
then if he fails you may do it a couple of times but ultimately you decide that
that person was not worth the investment," he said.
Frankly
Marion Tupy was being much too kind because this was much more than a horse losing
a race; this horse was paid and it went out of its way to ensure it lost the
race from start to finish.
Tsvangirai
was supposed to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the Global Political
Agreement (GPA). The reforms were designed to dismantle the Zanu PF vote
rigging machinery and deliver free, fair and credible elections. MDC had everything
the party needed to ensure all the reforms were implemented; they had the majority in parliament, had
five-years of the GNU and they had the backing of SADC, the West and the whole
international community. In the end MDC failed to get even one reform
implemented. Not even one.
Without
the reforms, Mugabe and Zanu PF were bound to rig the elections and they did
just that, blatantly rigged the July 2013 elections. To go into the elections
with not even one reform implemented was to plan to fail.
The
only two obvious reasons MDC did not get even one reform implemented are, first
of all, that the party’s leaders are corrupt. Mugabe saw to it that Tsvangirai
and his colleagues enjoyed all the trapping of being power and gravy train
life. Tsvangirai got a $4 million Highlands mansion. And in return Tsvangirai
and his MDC friends kicked the reforms into the tall grass because they knew
Mugabe did not want any of them implemented.
“MDC
vadzidza kudya vanyerere!” (MDC leaders have learnt to enjoy the gravy train
pleasures and not rock the boat!) Was the pithy retort from Mugabe cronies
mocking at MDC’s new indifference to public desperate demands for them to
implement the reforms!
The
second reason is that MDC leaders are incompetent. Of course Tsvangirai and his
MDC friends wanted to remain in government and retain their seats on the gravy
train; the very fact that they expected to do so regardless of all the vote
rigging by Mugabe shows just how naïve and breathtakingly incompetent they really
are.
Some
Zimbabweans have remained faithful to Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders but
that is only because they have never understood what the reforms are about let
alone why implementing them is still of such critical importance to bringing
about meaningful democratic change in Zimbabwe.
The day the penny finally drops; they too will understand why SADC and
the West deserted Tsvangirai and MDC in droves, they too will finally desert
MDC. On that day the search for competent political leaders will finally start
in earnest.
Being
corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent are shortcomings that can be overcome by
education or training; they are serious flaws in one’s character that will lead
the individual to repeat the same mistake again and again. If Tsvangirai was a
horse then he is one with a serious physical deformity he might just as well be
a three and half legged horse. He has lost three races already and the way he
has blundered from pillar to post it self-evident he never had a chance. Only
an idiot would still bet good money on him winning the fourth race.
Marion
Tupy is right, the West made the mistake of betting on Tsvangirai, “a wrong
horse”; they are certainly not going to wasting a cent backing Tsvangirai ever
again, they are not idiots!
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