MDC Alliance leaders want to cast themselves as democrats who have embraced the democratic ethos of open and meaningful debate and democratic competition. They are not democrats and there is nothing like the threat of holding free, fair and credible elections to show them for the hypocrites they are.
“MDC bigwigs, Tendai Biti, Amos Chibaya and Morgen Komichi on Saturday said that it was unwise to change leadership before the 2023 elections,” reported Zimeye.
This is laughable! When is comes to electing leaders MDC’s record is no different from that of Zanu PF.
MDC’s first elective congress, where Tsvangirai emerged as president, was the nearest the party has ever got to holding free, fair and credible elections. All the other elections that followed have been a sham, Tsvangirai’s name was the only one in the hat and instead of an election there was a coronation - just as Mugabe was doing in Zanu PF.
When Tsvangirai had served his maximum two five-year terms, he had the offending clause in the party constitution rubbed out. “It was not wise to change a winning team,” he argued. On the contrary, MDC had in fact blundered from pillar to post and accomplished nothing of note under his leadership.
When Tsvangirai died, Chamisa seized power in a process that never allowed any of the other two party VPs to have a look-in. Chamisa and his supporters resisted all demands for the party to hold an extra-ordinary congress to elect a new president. “The party has a president and should focus on the coming elections and not to be distracted,” he argued.
As it turned out, the failure to uphold the democratic ethos of holding free, fair and credible elections was not just a distraction, the party suffered yet another fractious break up.
Ordinary MDC party members have never had any meaningful say in the elections of Nelson Chamisa as VP, it was Tsvangirai who appointed Chamisa and Mudzuri VPs used his usual dictatorial tendencies. But of all the feeble excuses to deny party members a meaningful say in the election of the leaders Tendai Biti et al takes the biscuit.
Last year it was too late to elect a new leader, Tsvangirai died 14 February 2018 and the elections were due in July 2018, hardly six months away. Now Biti and company still do not want an elective congress because Chamisa is a winning ticket, no one else will better his last year’s electoral success! Douglas Mwonzora, the party’s secretary general, does not agree.
“The MDC targeted 4,5 million votes (Chamisa claims that he garnered 2.6 million votes to Mnangagwa’s 2.4 million), that was what was in our strategic plan. We did not achieve that. We did a very handsome score.
“But maybe those who are going to challenge him (Chamisa), if I get to challenge him, I have to prove that I can score more.”
MDC leaders have proven over the years that they are corrupt and incompetent, the lack of meaningful debate and democratic competition within the party has, as one would expect, stopped quality leaders emerging and scum to take their place. The party did not even have the common sense to implement even one democratic reform during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. It is no surprise the party’s strategic plan to win 4.5 million votes was a total failure!
"On the charge that I am weak, I am not weak. I was jailed for fighting one-party state by the ZANU PF government. I was in COPAC (parliamentary committee tasked to draft the new 2013 constitution) and was mandated to bring about a democratic people driven constitution and I delivered," Mwonzora said.
If Zimbabwe’s new constitution was indeed a democratic one, then why has it failed to deliver free, fair and credible elections, it’s primary objective?
Paul Mangwana, the Zanu PF MP and COPAC co-chairperson, boasted soon after the 2013 referendum that Mugabe dictated the new constitution. One has only to look at the evidence on the ground of corrupt, rigged elections and tyrannical oppression to know Mwonzora is the proverbial frog claiming he is the one who has been putting out the forest fires with his punny fart!
The people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb, millions were beaten and raped and over 500 were murdered in the 2008 elections alone; to elect MDC leaders into power on the understanding they will deliver the much needed democratic changes the nation was dying for. After nearly two decades on the political stage, MDC have failed to deliver even one meaningful democratic change. Not one!
The truth is MDC Alliance will never bring about any meaningful democratic changes and restore the individual freedoms and basic human rights that Zanu PF has done so usurp and deny the people. MDC leaders are paying lip service to the fight for democratic change, what they really care about is securing absolute power for themselves. Chamisa, Biti, Mwonzora, etc., they have all learnt, just as the Zanu PF thugs before them have done, that nothing threatens their own hold on power more than granting the masses a free and meaningful vote.
Zimbabwe is in a serious economic and political mess right now after 38 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule. The nation has had many golden opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship but all have been wasted. The sooner the nation realised MDC leaders like Chamisa, Biti and Mwonzora are corrupt and incompetent, they will never bring about the democratic changes the nation has been dying for, the sooner the can get on with the task of searching for quality leaders who can.
“MDC had the strategic plan to win 4.5 million votes!” That is laughable; the party did not even have the common sense to demand something as basic as a verified voters’ roll! So MDC had no strategic plan to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections but had one to win the rigged elections with a landslide!
4 comments:
MDC went into the 20013 elections with no reforms in place because they believed that they were so popular they would win regardless of the what ever vote rigging Zanu PF got up to. SADC leaders, amongst many others, had warned Tsvangirai and company not to go into the elections with out the reforms. Zanu PF went on to blatantly rig those elections as many had predicted. If anyone thought the MDC leaders had learnt the lesson they were wrong, these village idiots learn nothing from the past.
Initially MDC leaders resolved they would not take part in any future elections without first implementing the reforms. "No reform, no elections!" they said. But as the next national elections in 2018 approached, the village idiots forgot about their 2014 party resolution; it was clear they would take part in the elections.
Zanu PF was offered a few gravy train seats during national elections and MDC leaders joined in the opposition melee fighting over the scraps. The great cause of making sure elections are free, fair and credible was being trading in for selfish individual gain. Of course, these opposition candidates were selling out because by participating in the flawed and illegal election process they were giving it some modicum of credibility!
The very fact that these opposition candidate still participated in the elections even when ZEC failed to produce something as basic to free, fair and credible elections as a verified voters' roll underlines just how greedy and stupid they are!
@ Nyazinga
“Absolute garbage you Zanoid!!!.Morgan and Nelson won the 2008 & 2018 Elections respectively! They are the chosen leaders of Zimbabwe, simple.”
You clearly failed to get the jest of Patrick’s argument. His point is that MDC would never “win” any elections as long as they do nothing to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. It is foolish to plan on winning 4.5 million votes you have failed to take the common sense precaution of ensuring there is a verified voters’ roll. How else otherwise can you stop Zanu PF denying millions of eligible voters registering, stop many register voters being denied the vote because their details were deliberately posted to the wrong polling station, stop multiple voting by Zanu PF supporters, etc., etc. which is exactly what happened.
The EU Observers reported of numerous errors in ZEC’s result and the process was not transparent, could not be traced or verified; confirming there was widespread rigging.
As for Nelson winning last year’s elections that is a figment of his and many MDC supporters’ imagination. If the process and so flawed and illegal 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora were denied the vote, no one has ever verified who was on the voters’ roll used, etc.; it is nonsense to still talk of such a process produce a meaningful and legal result!
It is no surprising that simpletons like Chamisa and Mnangagwa should each claim to have won the election on the basis of result they claim to be true but cannot justify. They know not what constitute free, fair and credible elections. Ask each one in turn what is a verified voters’ roll and you might as well be speaking in some foreign language. Look at their blank faces!
But just because both Zanu PF and the opposition are full of village idiots who do not even know the what constitutes free, fair and credible elections that does not mean everyone else in the country is a village idiot. Last July’s elections were not free, fair and credible, the result was totally meaningless and void and therefore the claims of victory by anyone is just nonsense and must be dismissed with the contempt it rightly deserves.
@ Matsonzi
But so too has Zanu PF, they are still in power only because they are still able to rig elections and and use brute force to force the rest of the people to accept the regime.
However, the worsening economic meltdown is going to force Mnangagwa to give up power. Like it or not there will be regime change!
@ Zimvigil
A Ponzi scheme, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a way of creaming off money from deluded investors. They initially receive handsome returns but this does not come from profits on their investment but from new suckers drawn into the scheme, which inevitably ends up going bust.
Zimbabwe is a failed state. The economic situation is now so bad that many people are dying of poverty induced hardships. For the 3/4 of the population living on $30 per month or less in a country whose poverty datum line is US$650 per month clean drinking water, decent meal once a week, medicine, etc. are now luxuries they cannot afford.
As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs there will be no meaningful economic development. The economic meltdown will only get worse!
The prospect of Zanu PF remaining in power for the next four and half years in which the regime will come up with one Ponzi scheme after another whilst the nation sinks deeper and deeper into economic despair is simply unthinkable. Besides if Zanu PF is still in power in 2023, we can be certain the party will rig that year’s elections to extend its rule. Extend this hell on earth!
It is therefore imperative that Zanu PF must be pressure to step down a.s.a.p. By stepping down, Zanu PF will create the political space to allow the appointment of an interim administration tasked to implement the reforms, to bring some sanity on the economic front and to make sure the next elections free, fair and credible.
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