By Nomusa Garikai | Nelson Chamisa and his CCC friends are hell bent on participating in these 2023 elections just as they have done in 2013 and 2018. They are after the few gravy train seats Zanu PF is giving away as bait, they have very rarely admitted it offering all manner of feeble excuses to hide their greed.
David Coltart, Treasurer General of CCC and a senior MDC member ever since the party’s formation in 1999 and Minister of Education in the 2008 GNU, is one of the few who have admitted that the two MDC factions participated in the 2013 elections out of greed, pure and simple! Here is what he said:
“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 (2013) elections,” wrote Senator Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.
“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.”
There are ten key points we can pick and/or infer from this quotation:
1) That electoral process was not just flawed and illegal, but “so illegal, that the only logical, obvious, step was to withdraw”
2) That withdrawing from the election (which is what SADC itself had argued MDC leaders to do at the SADC Summit in Maputo in June 2013) would have “compelled SADC to hold Zanu PF to account”. In other words SADC would have denied Zanu PF legitimacy.
3) Neither MDC – T nor MDC N would do the logical and obvious thing because of greed “neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats”. Zanu PF needed the opposition to participate to get legitimacy and was giving away the few gravy train seats to entice them to participate.
4) The argument that Zanu PF would have got legitimacy regardless if one had participated is frivolous, to say the least, particularly since neither MDC – T nor MDC -N leaders had submitted even one reform proposal during the five years on which the justification to postpone the elections was based.
5) Indeed, even after failing to submit even one reform during the GNU either MDC faction should have seen boycott the election as their chance to redeem themselves by doing the obvious and logical thing!
6) SADC would have denied Zanu PF legitimacy even if only one MDC faction had boycotted the 2013 elections because the is historic precedence in this – Smith failed to get legitimacy from the 1978 Zimbabwe-Rhodesia internal settlement because only Muzorewa and Sithole had participated. Zanu and Zapu did the obvious thing and boycotted.
7) Denouncing these flawed and illegal elections and CCC’s selling out has put SADC under increased pressure to deny Zanu PF legitimacy.
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8) If the flawed 2023 election fail to produce a legitimate government then Zimbabwe will be compelled once again to find a transition arrangement similar to the 2008 GNU. This time competent men and women will be appointed to implement all the democratic reforms.
9) Just because the Zanu PF and MDC GNU failed to implement even one reform does not mean we don’t need the reforms. Ordinary men and women can and will implement the reforms – it is not rocket science!
10) It is insane to keep participating in an election process so flawed and illegal not even getting 73% of the vote was good enough to secure regime change! And the nation is being dragged into this madness by the very men and women povo risked life and limb to end the Zanu PF dictatorship – Chamisa and company!
– SOURCE: zsdemocrats.blogspot.com