Ozias Tungawara, Director of the Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy
Project, told Violet Gonda on S W Radio Africa Hot Seat that Zimbabweans will
be voting yes under the illusion that the elections that will follow will be
free of violence.
Tungwarara said there is a misplaced perception that a Yes vote for the
draft constitution will deliver a credible election. He believes this will not
happen for a number of reasons, including the fact that there are few
fundamental reforms, which were supposed to work in tandem with the
constitution making process, under the Global Political Agreement.
Tungwarara is absolutely right there; many people will vote yes on Saturday
thinking and believing there will be no violence in this year. PM Tsvangirai
and his MDC friends have gone out of their way to deny or down play the reality
of the 2008 violence being repeated.
Worse still, both Zanu PF and the two MDC factions have stifled all
meaningful discussion on what would happen if people voted NO. A NO vote would force
the democratic reforms to be implemented – MDC would hate to have to admit they
failed to get the reforms implemented and Mugabe would rather die than to have
them implemented. Implemented the reforms and you dismantle the dictatorship, the
underlying institutional weakens, that have allowed violence to happen.
Of course if people understood the linkage between implementing the reforms,
ending the culture of violence and that the only way to force the implementation
of the forms was by rejecting this Copac constitution; there in no doubt the NO
vote would win the day on 16 March 2013.
So the rushed referendum and the lack of a free and dynamic media,
orchestrated by both Zanu PF and MDC, have been used to fool the people to act
to undermine their own best interests! The people trusted Tsvangirai and MDC in
this, it will be a great shock when they discover - which they will do soon
enough when the Zanu PF juggernaut is rolled out and is crashing them like ants
- they were betrayed.
Just as the people had trusted Mugabe and Zanu PF only to be betrayed they
will know Tsvangirai and MDC have too betrayed them.
2 comments:
Everyone who has read the Copac constitution can see it is there to preserve Mugabe and Zanu PF’s dictatorial powers so how can it be “the brain child of MDC” as Prime Minister Tsvangirai claims? But the claim is to be expected; this is a man who has achieved nothing in all his five years in the GNU and had invested all his political capital on writing the new constitution only to see Mugabe brush him aside and “dictate” this dictator’s creed.
Poor Tsvangirai is selling the dictator’s creed as his own brain child. He is nothing but a robin bringing up a vulture’s nestling!
“The new Constitution sets out the Bill of Rights which for the first time expands people’s rights in totality. People shall henceforth be able to freely express their opinion, associate, and move freely without fear,” President Tsvangirai said. The man’s incompetence and lying knows no bounds.
Tsvangirai is so incompetent that he no doubt believed that producing a comprehensive list of rights and freedoms was enough to guarantee these rights. Still the reality on the ground, with people been beaten and small 12 year old boys being burnt alive forced him to admit that listing these rights in the Copac constitution was not enough. He and his party resubmitted their Conditions for a Sustainable Election in Zimbabwe which called for a number of democratic reforms to be implemented as a must to end the country’s culture of violence and lawlessness.
Sadly the effect of the brutal murder of Christpower Maisiri did not last long; Tsvangirai was back in his old ways lying about the weak and feeble Copac constitution being the panacea of the nation’s political problems.
Once Mugabe has the yes vote safely in the bag, he will roll out his juggernaut and the violence of 2008 will be repeated; the nation will then know for sure whether Tsvangirai’s promise that the people will enjoy all their rights was true or not!
Prospective MDC Mbare MP Candidate attached whilst putting up posters for a yes vote in tomorrow’s referendum. BBC news crew was caught in the fray but no one was seriously in-jured.
This is the beginning of the violence; once Zanu PF has the yes vote safely in the bag then the Zanu PF juggernaut will be rolled out.
MDC is in denial that there can be free and fair elections without implementing the GPA democratic reforms. Voting yes tomorrow will not change anything but reaffirm the status quo complete with the repeat of the violence of 2008!
Post a Comment