“Zanu-PF
tricked MDCs on running mates, says Charamba” screamed the Bulawayo24
headlines, accompanied by a photograph of the president’s spokesperson smiling
from ear to ear.
"In
a master stroke, Zanu-PF agreed to this contentious clause on proviso that it
would be held in abeyance for 10 years. It now appears the opposition, clearly
out of depth as always, thought Zanu-PF had given in to their law-making whim,"
boasted George Charamba
"It
never occurred to them Zanu-PF merely conceded without ceding an inch of
strategic ground. The running mate clause was unacceptable to Zanu-PF both on
grounds of principle and because of unsavoury experiences of the same."
He
was commenting of the Constitutional Amendment Bill No 2, recently passed by
parliament, which has effectively amended 27 different sections of the 2013
Zimbabwe Constitutions. One of the amendments scraps the need for presidential
candidates to have running mates. An elected VP will have the electoral mandate
and confidence to assert his/her independence; as contrast to one appointed by
the President and whose tenure can be terminated at the drop of a hat.
"I
point this out to expose the fallacy which is being touted by easy journalists
and commentators that the current President is responsible for scrapping of the
running mate in order to consolidate his hold on power and to block
Vice-President Chiwenga in Zanu-PF succession matrix,” explained Charamba.
"Of
course, I am charmed to note that these commentators in that false reasoning
admit that the future belongs to Zanu-PF. On that aspect alone, they are very
right!
"What
the current President is doing is merely accomplishing Zanu-PF's will which was
agreed on, under the then late President Robert Mugabe's leadership."
In
other words, Zanu PF outwitted MDC to have a clause suspending the running mate
clause for ten years 2013 to 2023 and now, before the suspension period was
over, passed an amendment scrapping the clause altogether. Job done!
"Amendment
Bill Number 2 is the single deadliest blow to our constitutionalism so
far," charged Dzikamai Bere, ZimRights National Director.
"It
is a tragedy that the people who claim to represent the people of Zimbabwe are
acting with impunity against the very people they purport to represent. I hope
the people will punish them for this treasonous act."
Treasonous
act! This is just stupidity personified!
Right
or wrong, the MPs have the constitutional power and authority to amend the
country’s constitution. How can they be guilty of treason for exercising their
constitutional power?
However
it would be a different matter if Bere said the MPs are committing high treason
because they are usurpers; they do not have the people’s democratic mandate to
govern the country because the July 2018 elections were not free, fair and
credible. There is no denying Zanu PF rigged the July 2018 elections.
“The (Zimbabwe)
electoral commission (ZEC) lacked full independence and appeared to not always
act in an impartial manner. The final results as announced by the Electoral
Commission contained numerous errors and lacked adequate traceability,
transparency and verifiability. Finally, the restrictions on political
freedoms, the excessive use of force by security forces and abuses of human rights
in the post-election period undermined the corresponding positive aspects
during the pre-election campaign. As such, many aspects of the 2018 elections
in Zimbabwe failed to meet international standards,” stated the EU Election
Observer Mission final report.
3
million Zimbabweans in the diaspora were denied the vote and ZEC failed to
produce something as basic as a verified voters’ roll for Pete’s sake!
George
Charamba is not the first Zanu PF official to boast of outwitting the MDC
opposition with disastrous consequences to the nation. As soon as it was clear
the nation had approved the 2013 Constitution; Paul Mangwana, Zanu PF co-chairperson
on the parliamentary committee that drafted the document, boasted that Mugabe “dictated”
the constitution.
MDC
leaders had campaigned for a yes vote in the referendum on the new Constitution.
Morgan Tsvangirai even claimed the new constitution was “an MDC child”! All
nonsense, of course as the new constitution failed its most important litmus
test – deliver free, fair and credible elections. And now it is clear even
those few clauses that Zanu PF had allowed to be included in the constitution the
party was using its dictatorial powers to rig elections and secure absolute
majority to amend at leisure!
"As
ZimRights, we are against the attempt to push back into the Constitution what
the people had rejected during the Constitution-making process," argued ZimRights
national chairperson Takesure Musiiwa.
Zimbabwe’s
2013 Constitution has failed to deliver or guarantee any of our democratic
freedoms and rights notable the right to free, fair and credible elections. Whatever
freedoms and rights it gives in one section it takes them all away in the next;
it is a dictator’s creed. It is naïve, to say the least, to expect a dictator
like Mugabe to dictate a democratic constitution.
The real clever bit is that Zanu PF not
only sold the nation a dictator’s creed disguised as a democratic constitution
but that even now with all the evidence of rigged elections some people still pretend
the elections were free and fair and the dictator’s creed is an exemplary
democratic constitution!
There is no one more blind that he who
would close his eyes and mind to the truth! It is bad enough anyone should
close their eyes to the truth Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by vote rigging
thugs precisely because we have a dictator’s creed for a constitution. It is
little wonder Zimbabwe is in a serious economic and political mess, the entire
opposition camp, civic society and millions of ordinary citizens have all elected
to close their eyes and minds. And, worst of all, there no hope of escaping
from the mess until we open our eyes and deal with the curse of rigged
elections and pariah state.
6 comments:
It is the ease with which Zanu PF has tricked MDC leaders again and again that is really shocking! Mugabe tricked Morgan Tsvangirai and company into believing the MDC leaders were now fully paid up member of Zimbabwe's ruling elite and therefore they did not need to implement the democratic reforms dismantling the club they are now members of.
As the GNU years were coming to a close, it was clear that MDC leaders had accomplished nothing of note and in a panic they compromised on everything Zanu PF demanded in the new constitution, just to get it over the line. MDC leaders were so desperate for something they had accomplished they eagerly claimed the new constitution, with all its glaring shortcomings as an "MDC child"!
SADC leaders tried to salvage the GNU and pressured MDC leaders not to participate in the 2013 elections until meaningful democratic reforms were implemented. Zanu PF played its trump card and let it be known that MDC leaders had not submitted even one democratic reform in the five years of the GNU. Not even one! Of course, SADC leaders were powerless to push for the elections to be postponed on the basis of implementing reforms when there are no outstanding reform proposals to implement.
The new political order that emerged from the 2008 to 2013 GNU was one in which Zanu PF had all its dictatorial powers, MDC leaders had been completely outwitted and now accepted a subordinate role of participating in flawed and illegal elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy and, in return, Zanu PF will allow MDC to win a few gravy train seats.
Fortunately for MDC leaders, most of the ordinary Zimbabweans had no clue the GNU was about implementing the democratic reforms, what these reforms were and much less how they were going to be implemented. Even today with the benefit of hindsight, millions still have no clue. And so it is no surprise that many Zimbabweans have continue to follow MDC leaders blindly like sheep.
If the ordinary Zimbabweans had been wide awake then they would have pressured MDC leaders to implement the reforms. Or, at the very least, they would now be aware of the futility, the sheer insanity, of participating in flawed and illegal elections on some idiotic basis of having strategies to win rigged elections. Zimbabweans' stupidity, our refusal to stop and think, is our own worst enemy and we are paying dearly for it!
Njube Lobengula MDC Alliance legislator Gift Banda on Thursday unveiled a scholarship programme for the academically gifted primary and secondary school students in his constituency who are from poor backgrounds.
Njube-Lobengula is one of the oldest suburbs in Bulawayo where the majority of the aged and poor are found. in 2020, Njube Secondary School students took to the streets to protest high tuition fees. Banda said a survey conducted by the Njube Constituency Development Committee showed that the situation was a lot worse for students in his constituency coming from poor backgrounds such as orphans who are now being forced to drop out of school.
The government also has a social welfare programme, the Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam), where it pays tuition fees for the disadvantaged and orphans. The Beam has however been affected by underfunding from the Treasury.
Council reports show that the government Beam debt dates back to 2014, and has been struggling to clear it resulting in beneficiaries being chased away from school over non-payment.
At one time councillors said contract forms compelling parents and the government to pay up fees on or before schools open should be introduced to ensure that council schools get money due to them.
This is just a gimmick, Gift Banda’s scholarship scheme will suffer the same fate as BEAM.
Zimbabwe’s economy is in ruins. And as long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and murderous thugs who rig elections to stay in power; there will be no meaningful economic recovery. The focus therefore should be on ending the curse of rigged elections and pariah state.
Zimbabweans must wake-up to the reality that Gift Banda and his fellow MDC A are the ones, by participating in flawed and illegal elections, giving legitimacy to the vote rigging Zanu PF and thus sustaining the pariah state.
Indeed Banda knows the scholarship scheme is gimmick to con the public into believing the opposition’s continued participating in elections is solving the nation’s problems. All he cares about keeping his gravy train seat and does not care at what price to the nation.
There are extensive deliberations back and forth in May, June and July 2012, resulting in Copac (Constitution Parliamentary Committee) formally adopting a draft national constitution on July 21.
This document is taken for adoption at the Second All-Stakeholders Conference - the fourth phase in the constitution-making process.
It is held on Monday and Tuesday, from October 22 to 23 2012, at the Harare International Conference Centre (hICC) in Harare.
It is quite a celebratory affair, with performances from various artists including Oliver Mtukudzi.
Who could have imagined the top leadership of the country - Robert Mugabe, Joice Mujuru, Morgan Tsvangirai and yours truly - dancing together at a public platform to Oliver's rhythmic beats?
They are like little mischievous and naughty kids as they vigorously and garrulously defend their perverted positions. They laugh derisively as they cherish this rare, though dishonourable, common ground: 'Successor? What for?'
Those are their dismissive and nauseating rhetorical questions.
History has borne out the folly of this misguided and unstrategic thinking on the part of these two political leaders - my fellow GNU principals
More significantly, the new modus operandi is driven and inspired by an egregious and unimaginative one-party state logic that is devoid of any developmental ambition, economic thrust or national-interest strategy. Sad.
This is the state of play in Zimbabwe.
Indeed, there is work to be done.
*This is an extended except from Arthur Mutambara's upcoming book: In Search of the elusive Zimbabwean Dream Volume 3
Even now, with the benefit of hindsight, Arthur Mutambara still heralds the 2013 Constitution as a democratic document and great GNU achievement instead of the dictator’s creed and a wasted golden opportunity to deliver meaningful democratic change.
As soon as the referendum result on the new constitution was out, Paul Mangwana, Zanu PF co-chairperson of COPAC, boasted that it was Mugabe who had dictate the new constitution. This was soon to be rubbed in big time as Zanu PF went on to blatantly rig the July 2013 elections. The new constitution failed its most important litmus test!
Important as the issue of running mate might be it really is irrelevant if the elections are not free, fair and credible but, naturally, Zanu PF was very pleased to discuss the running mate issue to draw attention away from the big issues of the many democratic reforms required to deliver free, fair and credible elections.
In the end, Zanu PF first “tricked”, as George Charamba boasted the other day, MDC leaders into accepting the running mate clause will be suspended for 10 years to garner Mutambara and his fellow MDC leaders’ total support of the new constitution in the March 2013 referendum. Zanu PF has since “tricked” MDC into scrapping the running mate clause by including it in the Amendment Bill No 2 together with other stuff MDC leaders liked.
The 2008 to 2013 GNU was Zimbabwe’s get out of jail card, if played it would have ended the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule. Arthur Mutambara and his fellow MDC leaders had five years to implement the democratic reforms to end the Zanu PF dictatorship; they failed to implement even one reform.
Arthur Mutambara is one egotistic village idiot and it is no surprise that he is now penned 3 Volumes documenting how corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent MDC leaders are and his star role in the 2008 to 2013 GNU, mothers of all sell-outs in Zimbabwe history. I pity the suckers who buy this trash and pity even more those who will lap it all up blissfully, unaware it is trash!
The prayer has appeared in many versions. Reinhold Niebuhr's versions of the prayer were always printed as a single prose sentence; printings that set out the prayer as three lines of verse modify the author's original version. The most well-known form is a late version, as it includes a reference to grace not found before 1951:[1]
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish the
one from the other.
@ Standard
However, it is not too late for the MDC-T and probably a few principled Zanu-PF legislators to redeem themselves by rejecting Constitution Amendment Number 2 when it is tabled before Senate soon.
For once, the legislators have to rise above their petty interests and put Zimbabwe first.
Instead of enthusiastically cheering on a leader who is clearly intent to consolidate his own power, the legislators must be pushing back and protecting the little gains Zimbabwe has made on the democracy front.
The legislators must be pushing for the alignment of laws to the constitution and not the tearing apart of the supreme law.
This is just bolting the stable door when the proverbial horse has long gone! Zimbabwe had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms and write a democratic constitution during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and MDC leaders sold-out big time on both fronts.
Zanu PF retained its dictatorial powers and was able to blatantly rig the elections to secure the presidency and 2/3 majority in parliament and senate. Those Zanu PF MPs and senators know they owe their positions to the party’s vote rigging prowess and not to the democratic wish of the people. And therefore for anyone to now appeal to these legislators to “put Zimbabwe first” is as futile as a goat praying the hyena is a vegetarian!
We must be serious and stop this childish wishful thinking. The senate is going to pass the Amendment Bill No 2.
If we are serious about meaningful democratic change then we must accept the present political system fundamentally flawed and needs radicle change. We must insist on the democratic reforms being implemented BEFORE the next elections because the argument that the opposition can win rigged elections is defeatist and foolish. We do not want rigged elections we want free, fair and credible elections!
Eddison Zvobgo was right, "rigged elections must be condemned in advance because they have been rigged in advance!"
One of the most foolish things the opposition has ever done is to keep participating in flawed and illegal elections, elections rigged in advance, and thus giving the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy.
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