MDC and many other
Zimbabweans are banking on the Zimbabwean economy sinking even deeper in the
mud and with it Zanu PF's popularity. The economy is set to sink, that much is
certain but these people are naïve to think it will help them win the next
elections. Mugabe has given up on doing something about the economy to win
votes. Of course, he did not win the 2013 elections; he rigged the whole
process. He is planning to do the same in 2018 and has already
started preparing to do just that.
It was the security
sector, the Army, the Police and the CIO who masterminded the vote rigging
plane and executed the plan with the ruthlessness of a ruling elite whose very
lives depended on winning the day. The tyrant employed 10 000 more security
sector employees, main CIOs; against the guidelines agreed with IMF and the WB.
Mugabe bankrupted the
nation to ensure money was a problem in the implementation of the vote rigging
plan.
In the 2014 national
budget the three security sectors the arms - Army, the Police and CIO - got the
lion's share of the funds and are almost certain to get a lot more than what is
stated in the vote. The Police's vote went up by 17 200% from 2013
allocation. The three will not only got their full allocation but a lot more
beside. Other Ministry are going to get a fraction of their allocation as
happened in the past.
The Ministry of Higher
and Tertiary Educations, for example, got a misery $50 000 to cover their
operational allocation of $114 million (assuming 30% the $ 380 m total
budget are operational costs whilst the remainder, 70%, goes to wages which
were paid).
Mugabe has already
committed $200 million to building a Spy University.
The security sector
delivered electoral victory for Mugabe in 2013 and he is beefing up the sector
even at the cost of further crippling the national economy to make sure it is
even stronger than ever to deliver yet another electoral victory.
Mugabe is turning
Zimbabwe into a Police State along the lines of North Korea. North Korea's
economy is a complete disaster compared to that of South Korea but ruling
elite in North Korea are more confident than ever of their political
dominance than those in South Korea.
In the totalitarian
Zimbabwe in which the Police and CIO controls every façade of the ordinary
people's lives and elections are not free, fair and credible; it is fear that
rules the day and not economic performance.
The only way to
stop Mugabe and Zanu PF from rigging the next elections is by
forcing him to implement the GPA democratic reforms and the only way to
do that is by forcing him to release the voters roll, the smoking gun of
the vote rigging or else for him to resign.
The reckless spending
to fund the vote rigging may have pushed the national economy over the edge.
Still, it is important that the economic melt-down is firmly linked to the
vote-rigging and to implementing the reform as the only way out of the mess.
MDC and some of the more myopic organisations have happily accepted
Mugabe’s continued rule and, no doubt, will welcome another GNU. The last GNU delivered
nothing and it is unthinkable to have five years of this economic chaos!
Mugabe rigged the
elections and is per se illegitimate. He must go!
13 comments:
Last week I was listening to the Zanu PF MP for Zaka on Zimnet Radio; he was wittering about starting projects to electrify all the schools in his constituency.
Zaka is one of the many areas in Zimbabwe prone to drought and no doubt there are hundreds of thousands of people there who are not having enough to eat. Instead of working hard to ensure these people are fed the honourable MP is wasting time talking of some pie-in-the-sky project that will never happen.
Zimbabwe has suffered chronic power cuts for decades, it will take decades for the country to increase its generating capacity to meet existing demand without extending the network. Any leader worth his salt will know that!
So instead of addressing the people's real and urgent needs the MP is off at a tangent talking about nothing! Is it any wonder the nation is in a real mess and so many people are suffering and so many are dying unnecessarily!
Zimbabwe used to be the bread-basket of the region and now it is a nation of beggars! This madness must be stopped!
“I am reasonably acquainted with the nature of our problems. There is no purpose for you to go to town to tell me what I already know," said Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa. Minister, that is precisely you problem, you think you "already know" the nature of the country's problems when you clearly do not have the foggiest idea!
“Don’t rise and repeat that there is a deficit of energy, the roads are in bad conditions, that I al-ready know. What I want to understand is how we can mobilize resources to address these fun-damental issues,” he said displaying his ignorance,
The deficit of energy and the roads being in bad conditions are NOT the problems but the by-products. Zimbabwe's problems arise from decades of gross mismanagement, rampant corrup-tion and an all-out looting spree by the country's ruling elite.
Mugabe and Zanu PF created a de facto one-party dictatorship so that the party's leaders can loot, You have just rigged the 2013 elections at great public expense so Zanu PF can stay in power and continue with the mismanagement, corruption and looting.
The national economy has been completely destroyed it has nothing left for you to loot but you are clearly not satisfied. You and your fellow Zanu PF ruling elite are hungry for more loot and you have been tasked "to find the money," Mugabe told at the Zanu PF Congress.
You want the $1,6 billion diaspora dollar and asked those in the diaspora to buy government bonds. These people are sending the money so that their relatives can to buy food, pay school fees, pay electricity bills, etc. Can people cook and eat your government bond?
You are now trying to find ways of taxing someone selling tomatoes by the road! You are truly desperate!
The solution to Zimbabwe's economic nightmare is stop the mismanagement and corruption and that is only possible if the nation has a democratically elected government which democratically accountable to the people!
Mugabe rigged the elections and you, Minister Chinamasa are all illegitimate; you must go!
@ Michael
Well Zimbabwe will be the first country to prosper out of mismanagement, corruption and looting! Mugabe told Chinamasa to "find the money". The dictator will find it was a lot easier said than done. He is the one leading the looters by keeping all the billions of dollars from the sell of Marange diamonds and yet expects to Chinamasa to find even more money!
Mugabe rigged the election now let us see if he can rig economic prosperity!
Mwando, Tsvangirai had five years to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA, he did not implement even one reform. Not one. Sadly for the nation, the people themselves were fast asleep and failed to see Tsvangirai for the blundering and incompetent leader he is. They followed him blindly like sheep to the slaughter. If you can not see that the nation had a real chance to bring about real democratic change, even now with the benefit of hindsight then one can only ask what it is going to take to finally open your eyes?
Zimbabweans are not the only people who have fought a bitter war of independence and freedom other nations have fought even more vicious wars. Mugabe an his Zanu PF thugs have turned on their follow Zimbabweans out of selfish greed; the war has nothing to do with! Just as the failure by so many Zimbabweans to comprehend the critical important of implementing the reforms has to do with their shallowness; the civil war had absolutely thing to do with it.
@ Zvenyika
In short disband Zanu PF - pretty good advice. Sadly it is not in the DNA of any dictatorship to destroy itself; we the people will have to make sure Mugabe and Zanu PF take the medicine. They rigged the elections, they are therefore illegitimate. It is up to us to make sure we have a legitimate government!
Mudenda accusing MPs of being corrupt! Is this a case of a pot calling a pan black when they are both covered in soot. All the Zanu PF MPs including Mudenda know Mugabe rigged the July elections so fiddling one's expenses is nothing compared to rigging national elections!
The trouble here is that the civil servants themselves have foolishly failed to even acknowledge let alone address the elephant in the room - the mismanagement, corruption and looting the root causes of the country's economic melt down.
So for years the civil servants have pretended government has the money and government has in turn pretended that there are no problems in the economy, none it cannot deal with anywhere, and it has the money. Mismanagement and corruption have taken a heavy toll and now the economy is terminally ill. This government is so broke it cannot afford even the $79 pay increase it is offering!
Many of the civil servants have played their part in keeping Mugabe in power, many of them even connived with the tyrant in the vote rigging in last year's elections. Well no Mugabe is paying them back in his own special way - by kicking them in the teeth!
Tsvangirai and senior MDC party officials met ZCTU to discuss the country’s deepening economic crisis.
“We realize that the country is in a crisis which manifests itself from a failed leadership,” Chamisa told New Zimbabwe.com last week. He was referring to Mugabe and Zanu PF as the “failed leadership”. Considering the relative ease with which Mugabe completely out-witted Tsvangirai and MDC the failed leadership is even worse in Tsvangirai and MDC!
What of any value would Tsvangirai have to say? Here is the man and political party whose blundering incompetence landed the whole nation into this political mess. If anyone at ZCTU really believes Tsvangirai has anything useful to say or do then that is a sorry indictment of the ZCTU official's own incompetence.
How can anyone still consider Tsvangirai a serious player in Zimbabwe after all the overwhelm-ing evidence of his incompetence? Of course if you are mentally blind it is a big-ask to expect someone like to see anything – if you blind you will not see the one thing no more than you will see a mountain!
“It is a reflection on how the government intends to pamper the President’s office. It could also be a sign that he (Mugabe) will be engaged in more foreign travel, and this budget means he won’t be restricted,” Mashimba Kuchera said.
I agree that this Zanu PF government intends to pamper Mugabe; after all if he had not masterminded the vote rigging most of the Zanu PF MPs and public officials would not be on the gravy train. However the main reason why this regime is spending so much on the CIO, Police and Army - the three are getting 25% of the budget allocation, it is a lot more in terms of paid allocation - is because Zanu PF is turning the country into Police State akin to that of North Korea!
"Government must be sincere and serious about this issue,” said Raymond Majongwe at the end of yet another fruitless day of salary negotiations with government. Government is offering $79 as contrast to the nearly $250 the civil servants are demanding.
The only issue Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs have been very "sincere and serious" about is that there will be no regime change so that they can continue to loot and brutalize the na-tion without ever fearing of being held to account! And as if to underline that very thing, the re-gime has been reckless in spending public funds to secure its re-election it has left such a big hole in public finances it will be hard pushed to pay public sector salaries at the current level much less with the added $79 promised increase!
It has been noticeably lacking is trade union leaders who are sincere and serious about getting the nation out of this economic and political mess. If people like Mr Majongwe were serious then they would have put their foot down years ago and demanded an end to the endemic mismanagement and corruptions in this Zanu PF regime instead of wasting all these years in endless but meaningless negotiations.
Zimbabweans have become masters at tinkering round the edges without ever changing any-thing!
@ Sulaak
President Kiir has no democratic credentials worth talking about and so please stop talking of him as if he had no hand in this.
Uganda and Zimbabwe are both under corrupt and tyrannical regimes, the people are angry and frustrated at being denied their meaningful say in the governance of the country. The pressure for change has been building up and one of these days the volcano will erupt! In Zimbabwe there are already signs that Zanu PF is imploding with the national economy is melt-down and Mugabe on his death-bed and party factions at each other throats fighting over the poisoned chalice he is leaving behind!
@ Mama
Dictatorship is anarchy, you should be careful what you wish for!
I am critical of President Kiir for his failure to establish his own and the country's democratic credentials when he had the chance.
I an critical of the rebels for not forcing Kiir to implement meaningful democratic change WITHOUT resorting to the use of arms.
I am critical of hyenas like Museveni whose presence in South Sudan will make a bad situation even worse because he is not interested in peace or stability of South Sudan but his own selfish political gains.
I feel sorry for the people of South Sudan who are caught up in all this mess and will pay the heavy price in human suffering and, for many, with their very lives!
@ Grace J
26% of $303 = $79.00
2.6% of $ 3 030 = $ 79.00
The trouble with you Mugabe spin-doctors is you think you can bull-shit people and get away with it. Do you really think anyone will be that stupid not to understand the difference between those paid $303 and $ 3 030!
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