ZANU PF MPs aligned to Vice President Joice Mujuru are mulling plans to resign from Parliament in a move that could paralyse the legislature and force another general election.
The plan has as much chance of succeeding as the failed plan to ensure VP Mujuru held on to her position as VP after the elective congress. There are many reasons why the plan is doomed amongst them are the following:
To force another general election, two thirds of both houses, parliament and senate, will have to pass a resolution dissolving parliament and senate. The Mujuru faction plus MDC do not have the numbers.
Some people claimed Mujuru had as many as 100 MPs on her side before the factional fighting took centre stage three months ago; now with the battle all but won by the Mnangagwa faction, she will be very lucky to still have half of her MPs still behind her.
Mai Mujuru would be even luckier still if the 50 or so MPs supporting her would risk their seats on the gravy train and resign to force bye-elections. As seating MPs their economic situation is infinitely better than if they were just another head of the powerless and voiceless masses, povo. Mujuru faction candidate is certain to lose the bye-election to Mnangagwa faction candidate in the first place, if the bye-election is a repeat of last year’s vote, and if there is no vote rigging then the opposition candidate will win.
All Zanu PF MPs know that they did not win last year’s elections as Nathaniel Manheru cum George Charamba admitted in his last column over the weekend.
“If truth be told, very few leaders in Zanu-PF are able to explain how the 2013 elections happened, how the landslide victory came about. Equally, very few in Zanu-PF can legitimately claim that victory, much as it benefited them,” wrote Nathaniel Manheru in the article “The notion of an extended GNU had many silent proponents inside Zanu-PF” in Bulawayo24.
Everyone knows that last year’s elections were rigged and that it was the Mnangagwa faction who hatched the plan and executed it. Not that the plan was a master-piece, indeed it was amateurish as access to the voters roll would have revealed and hence Mugabe’s refusal to make it public. The plan worked largely because of the breath-taking incompetence of Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends; they failed to get even one democratic reform implemented, they did not even insist on having the voters roll released.
Most of the Mujuru faction MPs including VP Mujuru herself were deliberately kept in the dark of the details of last year’s vote rigging plan still they were aware of the plan and have since learnt more details. If they are serious about ending the Zanu PF dictatorship then they must reveal the details of last year’s rigged elections because that will show the regime is indeed illegitimate. That will be enough to force the regime to accept the implementation of all the democratic reforms and thus ensure the next elections are free, fair and credible.
If the Mujuru faction kept their lips sealed as regards last year’s rigged elections, then they are storing up trouble for themselves because they will have no chance of winning the bye-elections. It is one thing throwing the loaded dice it is another matter knowing that you are being cheated.
The biggest challenge to Zanu PF’s continued rule is not the factional fighting, ruthless and bloody as it already, but the economic meltdown caused by the decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption. Throughout all these years none of the Zanu PF leaders, right across the factional divide, have shown that they had realised something was wrong. Even today, few in Zanu PF seems comprehend the full extent of the economic meltdown much less how to put it right.
If any of the Mujuru faction members are banking on public sympathy for the savage kicking in the teeth they have just got from the Mnangagwa faction to get themselves elected back into office to carry on as before on with the mismanagement and corruption as before then they need their heads examined. The Zimbabwe public want an end to the corruption and tyranny.
Conclusion
What the Mujuru faction is failing to realise is that as far as the ordinary Zimbabweans are concerns they are part and parcel of this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship which dragged the nation into this political and economic hell-hole. The only way out of this hell is for the dictatorship to be completely dismantled; the dog-eat-dog factional fighting is a necessary part of this dismembering of the dictatorship.
The Mujuru faction is the less devisive and ruthless of the two factions in Zanu PF but that any look at VP Mujuru, Rugare Gumbo or any of the other leaders in her factions shows that they are just as corrupt and incompetent as the rest in the Mnangagwa factions. The people of Zimbabwe want the political stage swept clean of the Zanu PF dictatorship and not the half-way house shaking off one Zanu PF faction and retain the other half to continue to rule!
The only useful option for thr Mujuru faction in this clean-start scenario is for them to give the details of how last year’s elections were rigged and force the implementation of the reforms to stop future elections being rigged. They can then take their chance in the next free, fair and credible election on the same footing as everyone else.