Wilbert Mukori | Zimbabweans must step up their political game if the nation is ever going to get out of the hell-on-earth it is in right now. Those who continue to follow people like Nelson Chamisa are telling the whole world that Zimbabwe is NOT yet ready to get out of the hell-hole. Chamisa is not presidential material and every time he opens his mouth he confines it.

“Reforms are very important. There can’t be elections without reforms. ED must stop paying lip service and giving political rhetoric to free and fair elections,” said Chamisa.

After all that has been said on the subject, especially during and after the GNU; one expected that this is the one subject any MDC leader will be able to talk about with authority and decisiveness. Not so from Chamisa!

“He (President Mnangagwa) has been calling for free and fair elections but he has been doing nothing about free and fair polls. Free and fair elections is not a slogan but practical substance on the ground.

“What legislative reforms have been put in place; what institutional reforms have been put in place; what structural reforms have been put in place; what about habitual and cultural reforms (that) have been instituted? This madness has shot off the roof.”

Gift Phiri, Daily News Editor, tried to pin down Chamisa with a follow up question. “Let’s suppose you don’t get the reforms you are pushing for, what will you do?”

“We will never accept an election where we don’t know where ballot papers are printed. Polling material to be used and the ballot printing are key issues that we are not going to leave to conjecture like we did in 2013.”

If Chamisa was not such a scatter-brain then he would know the following:

1)    Even with the best will in the world no one can implement the legislative, structural, etc. reforms he is talking about now, four or five months before the elections. So, if there is no hope in getting the reforms implemented the question of what MDC is going to do become a rhetorical one in that we already know the answer – the party will contest the elections regardless.

2)    Chamisa is asking Mnangagwa to implement the reforms and yet MDC failed to get even one reform implemented in five years of the GNU. One gets the feeling he is just grandstanding, he would never get any meaningful reforms implemented even if he was to get another chance to do so.

3)    David Coltart admitted the reason why MDC leaders ignored SADC leaders’ advice not to take part in the July 2013 elections without reforms was greed. “The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the elections,” explained Senator Coltart.

“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”

Coltart has also acknowledge the price the nation has had to pay for the MDC leaders’ greed was forfeiting the chance to force Zanu PF to implement the reforms. The same cannot be said about Chamisa and many of the other MDC leaders; they are ploughing on heedlessly, blundering from pillar to post.

The state of the nation’s economy with unemployment a nauseating 90% and ¾ of our people living on US$1.00 a day speaks volumes of Zanu PF, the party that has governed the nation these last 38 years. The country is dying, literally, for a complete government to take it out of this hell-hole. Alas! MDC is not that alternative government.

Nations get the government they deserve, 38 years after independence, we cannot say we do not deserve this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship complete with its entourage of corrupt and incompetent opposition parties. If we want a competent and accountable government then we will have to take the business of selecting competent leaders with the urgency and seriousness the matter demands.

Zimbabwe is the poorest nation in Africa both economically and politically; to have E D Mnangagwa and N Chamisa as the nation’s presidential candidates shows just how desperately poor the nation must be.

“Tichanzwa nokuvirira zvose mavhu namarara!” (We will pay dearly for our recklessness in electing rubbish as leaders!)