By Paul Nyathi|Minister of Provincial Affairs for Matabeleland South Abednico Ncube who was last month thumped in the ZANU PF primary election in Gwanda South is making frantic efforts to have the result reversed and the election rerun.
Highly placed sources within the party told ZimEye.com that a heavily tense meeting was held in Gwanda on Friday where Ncube and his other losing collegues battled very hard to convince the Provincial Coordinating Committee to get a rerun for all the thirteen constituencies in the province.
“Some senior members who lost the elections expressed dissatisfaction over the recently held primary elections and they are pushing for fresh polls in all the constituencies,” said the source.
However, the party secretary for information and publicity Simon Khaya Moyo is reported to have dismissed the claims by the members demanding for the rerun.
The sources indicated that Khaya Moyo was immediately sanctioned by the members who resorted to calling for his dismissal from the party on allegations that he is a G40 member.
Meanwhile, the party has sternly warned party members who lost in the primary elections to desist from de-campaigning candidates who were selected to represent the party in this year’s harmonised elections.
Party Secretary for Administration Obert Mpofu said in a media briefing on Saturday, that losing candidates threatening to decampaign the party’s candidates at all levels of the election race were out of order and risked being sanctioned.
“If they are genuine party members they can’t do that. Such behaviour can only come from people planted into the party to cause chaos. We will not tolerate that. It is gross indiscipline for anyone to behave in that manner after such an open process where candidates were given equal opportunities and platforms to campaign. If they behave like that, then they are bad losers.”
“Our main target is the harmonised elections and all party members should support the chosen candidates. We can’t expend our energies on negativities. We urge all members of the party who didn’t make it in the primaries to support our candidates,” he said.
Dr Mpofu said some of the complaints raised by the losing candidates had no basis and bordered on bitterness.
“If there are irregularities we accept that but what is worrying is that most of the complaints are coming after results were announced. The candidates allowed voting to go on and only started complaining after realising that they had lost,” he said.