ED Must Disembark From High Horse Of Arrogance
7 October 2019
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Fuel prices went up over the weekend, triggering price hikes of basic commodities and further worsening an economic calamity whose roots lie in a legitimacy crisis arising out of the stolen election of July 2018.

Mr Mnangagwa must disembark from his high horse of arrogance and engage for dialogue with the people’s President, Advocate Nelson Chamisa. Morale is at a low ebb in all private and public institutions especially schools and hospitals. Villagers, urban dwellers, the old, school children and the vulnerable can barely make ends meet in the current crisis where prices and transport fares are going up several times in a single week. This regime continues to bury its head in the sand even as fuel prices increase every week, further straining the lives of ordinary citizens who are surviving on barely US 30 cents day.

So dire is the national crisis that the president who came from the courts must urgently engage the President who came from the people. That dialogue must be aimed at scaffolding the country upon the firm foundation of a sincere, meaningful and genuine dialogue process that must address the unfinished business of 2018. As we state in our RELOAD document, the dialogue must ensure that the country breaks away from the vicious cycle of disputed elections through an agreed national transitional mechanism whose mandate will be to implement a raft of comprehensive reforms that must culminate in a free, fair and credible election as the only way to return the country to legitimacy.

Arrogance and pride will not help because the people are suffering. It does not help that Mr Mnangagwa seeks to re-engage the world when he is not engaging nationally with a key national player who has over two million supporters in the country, even by ZEC’s rigged figures.

Mnangagwa must not hoodwink himself through his constant rhetoric on dialogue that is not backed by any substantive action on the ground. His political soliloquy as evidenced by the self-serving political actors’ dialogue (POLAD) process is inconsequential as he is essentially speaking to himself because all the so-called political actors are a choir that is singing in agreement with him. The POLAD platform is essentially a monologue as it is not dialogical.

The deteriorating national crisis is crying out for a meaningful dialogue process and Mr Mnangagwa must take the national situation seriously before the people peacefully and constitutionally stampede him onto the dialogue table. It is their democratic right.

MDC@20: Celebrating courage, growth and the people’s victories

Luke Tamborinyoka
Deputy National Spokesperson