“At a time that long-suffering Zimbabweans are struggling to
make ends meet, President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF is splurging up to $60
million on a new fleet of cars, trucks and buses, ahead of next year’s eagerly-awaited
national election,” reported the Daily News.
“This also comes as the country’s stone-broke government is
planning to splash millions more on brand new cars for traditional leaders, in
a move that has been roundly condemned as “sickening vote buying” by Zanu PF
ahead of the watershed polls — and not withstanding other more urgent needs.”
Bad news is like a migraine headache, it does not matter how
often, for how long and never mind that this has been going on for years; each
attack is as painful as ever. You never ever get used to the pain you not to feel
it! Zimbabweans are the poorest in Africa, according to AfrAsia Bank report,
how can the ruling party be squandering millions on new party cars and buying
votes when even the most basic services such as health and education are all
but collapsed. This does not make any sense!
“As the MDC and also as the country’s largest and most
popular political party, this is why we are strenuously pushing for electoral
reforms in order to make the playing field even,” was the
response from Obert Gutu, MDC-T spokesman.
It should be the smoothing forlorn crying of titihoya, one
of the birds of the veld. But, knowing it was Tsvangirai and his MDC friends’ selfish betrayal that has landing us all in this hell-on-earth;
Gutu’s voice is the raucous protest of a crow. Not a
sound someone nursing a headache would want to hear!
The people of Zimbabwe must never forget that the nation would
have finally rid itself of Mugabe’s corrupt and
tyrannical regime in 2013 if only Tsvangirai and company had implemented the
democratic reforms and thus stopped the vote rigging. SADC leaders warned MDC
not to contest the July 2013 elections with no reforms in place but were
ignored.
Since the rigged elections, MDC leaders vowed not to contest
any more future elections until all the reforms are implemented. Yes, is was
going to be a much tougher challenge to get the reforms implemented post the
GNU but it is not an impossible task.
To date, MDC has failed to get even one reform implement and
it is clear they have given up. The party has certainly not “strenuously
pushing for electoral reforms”; Gutu is lying.
MDC leaders are not supposed to contest the next elections
according to SADC’s advice and the party’s
own “No reform, no election!” resolution. And yet Tsvangirai and company are
preparing to contest the elections regardless of there being no reforms in
place and the certainty the elections will be rigged.
“How are we supposed to compete with a mafia organisation
that has looted, ransacked and grabbed the country’s natural resources to push
its wicked and nefarious political agenda?” came the hypocritical raucous cries
of Obert Gutu.
MDC contested the flawed 2013 elections, against SADC
advice, because they were after the few gravy train seats Zanu PF gives away as
bait. By contesting the elections the opposition are giving the process the
modicum of democratic legitimacy, the political oxygen Zanu PF needs to avoid
the fiasco of the 2008 elections resulting in the GNU.
MDC are, once again, ignoring SADC advice and their own
party resolution to contest the 2018 elections with not one reform in place for
the same gravy train seats. But to listen to the hypocrites, they want to make it appear as if they are contesting
the flawed elections against their better judgement and they are doing us all a
great favour – that is what makes their treacherous betrayal so, so patronising
and irritating!
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is so serious and the suffering
it has brought so bad, the country cannot afford another rigged election. It is
now incumbent on the people to stop the opposition selling-out on implementing
the reforms by once again contesting the flawed elections. Tsvangirai & co.
must be pressured to honour their own “No reform, no election!” resolution. They
have sold-out in the past, they must not be allowed to do so this time!
5 comments:
You can convince a blind man there is beans in his fufu but not so with hot pepper, he will know.
All these researchers are insulting us, the people of Zimbabwe, that even with everything all around us in an advance state of rot and decay whilst our leaders are as fat as the rat who
found his way into the granary, still we are too stupid to know these leaders are our curse! It may have taken us a long time to know President Mugabe and his Zanu PF friends are corrupt, incompetent and murderous thugs, we now know that and have done some for the last two decades, at least. Our big problem is how to remove the tyrannical regime since they have mastered the art of rigging elections.
What is really irritating about people like Stephen Chan is that they live in a democratic country, the UK; they know what free and fair elections are about. And yet they are writing about Mugabe winning the 2013 elections and say nothing about how he blatantly rigged the vote. They have completely ignored our cries for free and fair elections as if they do not know what we are talking about!
Getting rid of our fat rats is only that much difficult when you have a jealous neighbour how will spear your granary to allow the rats to get in.
@ Steve Blomfield
Zimbabweans have made great many sacrifices for the country's independence, some of us fought in the liberation war. Was that not enough "blood of martyrs" for you?
All we succeed in doing in 1980 is replace the white oppressors with the black ones. That did not happen because we did not have enough martyrs before independence. It happened because we had mercenaries, who cared nothing about freedom, liberty and justice, who fought in the war for the exclusive right to replace the whites as the country's new rulers and masters. We cannot be a nation of savages in which each generation must fight the generation before it for its very existences!
The current crop of the opposition had the chance to implement the democratic reforms that would have ended the Zanu PF dictatorship. We can still have the reform implemented if we can force the opposition not to contest in next year’s elections with no reforms. The opposition are the ones who are letting the people done by contesting elections they know will help keep Zanu PF in power.
MDC-T and NPP youths squabbling over NERA donor funds.
Some people have money to burn! What it is exactly are these donors expecting NERA to ever accomplish? These NERA people not told us the detail of even one electoral reform they want implemented because there is no electoral reform that will make any difference in terms of delivering free and fair elections.
NERA is just a gathering of confused and egotistic individuals with time to kill. I am surprised that any donor would be fooled to into funding such time wasters - except it is NIKUV or some suck surrogate ZAnu PF sponsored donor!
Mzembi must stop talking nonsense, Mugabe's land redistribution was a disaster because the tyrant use the land issue for his own selfish political gain and to gratify the insatiable greed of his cronies - that had nothing to do with the national agenda of settling the country's landless peasants. We still need to revisit the land issue to ease the pressure land degradation and poverty trap most rural people are caught up in.
Yes, Yamamoto, with a people with a little self-belief and vision, Zimbabwe could have a $100 billion economy right now instead of a misery $4 billion and having the singular honour of being the poorest people on earth!
"We can still shape a better future. If Zimbabwe's economy had decent stewards with a modicum of vision, Zimbabwe's economy would have been the third largest economy in Africa or better, because it had a good head start. It could easily have been the Singapore or South Korea of Africa," Yamatomo said.
I do not see us ever getting out of the economic and political mess we are in right now. We have individual who are aspiring to be the nation’s leaders and yet they do not even know what constitute a free and fair election much less how the country is to implement the democratic reforms to end the present de facto one-party dictatorship.
Indeed, we could have ended the Zanu PF dictatorship by July 2013 at the latest if the MDC leaders had not sold-out to Mugabe. He entrapped them with the trapping of high office, a $4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc. and MDC kicked reforms into the tall grass. The tyrant entrapped his Zanu PF cronies in much the same way and they have all been “vakadzi vaMugabe” (Mugabe’s subservient concubines) as Margaret Dongo aptly put it.
The very fact that we have an $ 4 billion economy when we should have a $100 billion one is not surprising when you consider the utterly use men and women leading the nation! The people themselves have elected these individuals to lead and they are quite content with the scum.
In the long run, people get the government they deserve. After 37 years since independence, we certain deserve these corrupt and murderous Zanu PF thugs complete with the complimentary “buy one get ten free” corrupt and incompetent opposition!
We have sunk so low, from a potential $100 billion economy to $4 billion, it is quite possible we have gone beyond the point of no return!
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