MUTINHIRI FACES OUSTER

 Insiders say the new National Patriotic Front (NPF) — which has the blessings of ousted former president Robert Mugabe — could suffer a stillbirth, amid damaging internal accusations that the fledgling party’s leader Rtd brigadier Ambrose Mutinhiri is “incompetent”.

Well-placed sources who spoke to the Daily News yesterday said there were already serious ructions within the political outfit, with Mugabe’s wife Grace and a few of the former Zanu PF bigwigs who are linked to the new party apparently now saying Mutinhiri lacked both the capacity and the energy to go toe to toe with the ruling party and the MDC Alliance in this year’s national elections.

However, sympathisers of the former securocrat and Mashonaland East provincial minister leapt to his defence yesterday saying he had been “set up to fail” when he was surprisingly catapulted to the leadership of the party.

“There is war inside the party, with Grace and her close former G40 kingpins now pushing for Mutinhiri’s ouster, claiming that he is incompetent and that she (Grace) is better qualified and placed to lead the party into this year’s elections.

“I really sympathise with Mutinhiri, as looking at the issue in retrospect it’s now clear that he was set up to fail, as NPF only exists on paper with neither a structure nor followers.

“It is also clear now that he was used, just like what Grace and the G40 kingpins did to poor (former Cabinet minister Sydney) Sekeramayi whose name they expediently threw into the Zanu PF succession mix last year when they in fact wanted Grace to succeed Mugabe,” one of the insiders said.

This comes as the NPF was due to announce its full team in the run-up to Easter, but inexplicably failed to do so — although it was not immediately clear whether this was linked to the emerging differences.

However, NPF spokesperson Jealousy Mawarire accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government of peddling falsehoods against the party.“I have not heard any complaints about ... Mutinhiri’s leadership and therefore cannot comment on falsehoods planted by the junta to elicit information about our party.

“We have all our feet on the ground and our hands on the wheel. We will shake the regime in a big way and will certainly save our people from the shackles put on them on November 15, 2017.
“We will send Mnangagwa and his fellow coup organisers out of government through the harmonised elections this year,” Mawarire said.

The NPF spokesperson also said they had deferred releasing their list of the party’s leadership after learning of the intelligence community’s “machinations” — which he claimed had been foiled by their delay.

“We know the junta has been desperate for that list, and has tried to come up with its own list of our leadership and we are enjoying the desperation and panic shown by this illegal regime.

“We are strategic in our planning and the execution of our strategy. We are a party formed in the midst of a coup and operating in a country under a military junta, hence it will be both unprofessional and unstrategic for me, or any organ of the party for that matter to lay bare our strategy to our opponents. Daily News

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