By- MDC-T Harare provincial spokesperson Fungai Chiposi said that he rejected calls from the party’s suspended Harare provincial chairman Zivai Mhetu to remove Douglas Mwonzora .
Chiposi said there were calls to remove Mwonzora following the party’s poor performance in the 26 March National Assembly and local authority by-elections.
Chiposi was the MDC Alliance candidate for Kambuzuma while Mhetu contested in Epworth. The duo lost dismally.
The MDC-T, despite contesting as the MDC Alliance in a move interpreted by political observers as a desperate attempt to ride on Nelson Chamisa’s popularity in 2018, failed to win a single National Assembly seat or ward.
This resulted in some party members especially losing candidates suggesting that Mwonzora must step down, with Mhetu instrumental in lobbying members toward the move.
Mhetu has since been suspended from the party while Chiposi was removed from the party’s WhatsApp groups and barred from entering Morgan Richard Tsvangirai House, the MDC-T’s headquarters, for a National Council meeting last Friday.
Speaking to OpenParly, Chiposi said it is unfair to blame Mwonzora for the party’s poor showing without first doing a survey. He said:
The rumour had circulated; I was aware of some of the lobbying that was happening behind scenes. For some reason, I was the person that was not lobbied.
I think it’s because of my close connection to the president that I hold the president in high esteem.
My reason for not voting for the president to step down was the view I have of the man.
My second reason was that I thought it was too early to the election for us to be making decisions like that, especially if we don’t have what I would call empirical evidence that the people are not voting for us because we have Douglas Mwonzora as the president.
I think these are some of the things that we need to have a proper market survey so that we then know that this is what is affecting us. It may not be the president, it may be the message that we came with.
It may be certain things that were amiss in terms of addressing during the period that we came from 30 March just after the supreme court judgment up to now maybe some of those things.