Finance Minister Tendai Biti has warned that the GNU will fail if the international community does not step forward and give the regime the financial assistance it solely needs.
“If we fail, the consequences will be dire, “warned the Minister of Finance, “such as a military coup or civil unrest.”
The international community have said they will not give the GNU no financial assistance until they are satisfied the new regime has broken away from the old Mugabe and Zanu PF corrupt and wasteful economic ways and has accepted democratic reforms. It was to see how Mugabe would allow any of these changes as long as he remained in total control of the GNU. So, naturally, the International community took the “wait and see” position, a position Minister Biti compared to the chicken and egg.
“Our capacity to deliver is linked to economic stability and we need help,” Minister Biti argued. “It cannot be a chicken and egg situation; there has to be a chicken, or an egg, first.”
Minister Biti is not any economist but so are many of us out there, still many people have said the bloated government was a bad start. Surely the good Minister should have realised this was a chance for the GNU to show the world that it was ready to break away from Mugabe’s past of reckless spending and do its bit. Instead all MDC was interested in is securing as many ministerial positions for as many of its numbers as was possible even though that meant a bloated regime.
The MDC should also have realised the International Community was distrustful of Mugabe, for good reasons too, and devised ways to rein him in. As it turned out Mugabe has been shooting his big mouth at every opportunity; confirming again and again that he was in total control of the GNU and that nothing has changed.
Minister Biti has warned of “dire” consequences should the GNU fail. He is right on the ball there. But what the Minister, Tsvangirai and the whole MDC leadership should have considered before joining Mugabe to form the GNU was obvious: that the GNU was in fact the old Zanu PF in everything but name. Minister Biti would agree that in the past pumping billions of dollars into the old Zanu PF regime has made the ruling elite rich and hungry for more whilst the poor got poorer. It is very naïve of Minister Biti to think that the same corrupt and wasteful Zanu PF regime would do any better now just because he is the Minister of Finance. A Minister of Finance whose powers are so limited he is forced to implement the economic policies of the Reserve Bank Governors!
The GNU is doomed to fail whether or not the international community step up and gives Minister Biti all the money he asks for- the more the regime receives the more it will waste.
Zimbabwe’s economic, political and social recovery and long term prosperity and stability are totally dependant on one factor, restoration of good governance. MDC are wrong to think that the throwing more good money after bad will make the country’s fundamental the problem go away. They are thinking like Mugabe and his ruling elite. Of course no responsible government is going to do that, much less in these very difficult days of a world wide deep recession!
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