MDC Alliance partners have blasted the coalition’s leader
Mr Nelson Chamisa as a deceptive politician who does not respect agreements
after he dribbled them and fielded candidates in constituencies reserved for
the allies.
Further, the alliance partners concluded that Mr Chamisa’s
actions vindicated assertions that there was a strong and pronounced
anti-Ndebele sentiment in MDC-T, as most candidates from the Matabeleland
region under Professor Welshman Ncube failed to file their nomination papers
after being duped by Mr Chamisa’s team.
In Matabeleland South, the MDC-T refused to sign nomination
papers belonging to Prof Ncube’s candidates and most alliance partners were not
contesting in council elections.
Proportional representation sitting MP Nomalanga Khumalo
also suffered a similar fate. Mr Chamisa is also running court battles with Dr
Thokozani Khupe, who also hails from Matabeleland following a nasty separation
underwritten by deception and dishonesty.
The move by Mr Chamisa saw other alliance partners snubbing
his campaign rallies in Binga and Victoria Falls last weekend. Notable
absentees at the rallies in Binga, Hwange and Victoria Falls were Prof Ncube,
Mr Tendai Biti of People’s Democratic Party and Ms Lynette Karenyi, the MDC- T
women’s assembly chairperson who was elbowed out of the opposition party’s
primary elections in a violent manner. An MDC Alliance partner who spoke to The
Herald yesterday said the issue of alliance building was unnecessary.
“What has happened indicates that Chamisa has upheld the
plan of his predecessor (Mr) Morgan Tsvangirai, which was to attract back the
dissident element, but without conceding a single inch of the ground to them,”
said the alliance partner.
“It is an old rule of politics that you don’t reward
rebellion, lest you encourage it. It lowers Chamisa’s trustworthiness as no one
will want to cut deals with him in future for, as Welshman puts it, nothing was
unexpected.”
MDC spokesperson Mr Kurauone Chihwayi had no kind words for
Mr Chamisa, saying they realised that they were dealing with “chameleons and
vultures”.
“We have a history of surviving life threatening storms,”
he said.
“I can safely confirm the presence of bad apples in the
bag. The MDC family is in pain, but we are all praying for an alliance victory.
The grabbing of our seats is a disturbing development.
“We are dealing with chameleons and vultures. Our eyes are
on the ball and everybody is full of life. We have a history of surviving
life-threatening storms. We are widely consulting members of the party.”
Another alliance partner said the arrangement was a
marriage of convenience between two “dishonest sides”.
“The only difference is that Chamisa’s act has ripened fast
and earlier,” he said.
“In the case of smaller parties, the strategy was to buy
time while enjoying the comfort of the then MDC-T wings in order to rebuild
themselves from local council elections upwards. If you take a look, there is a
preponderant presence of small parties at local government elections level,
which is the basic building block.
“Unfortunately for them, they did not push hard enough to
ensure that they wrestled or shared the signing powers which remained
exclusively with the MDC Alliance and sure to its character, the alliance used
it to devastating effect, forcing most of these stranded council aspirants to
either drop out or run as independents.”
Other alliance partners said they had various options to
express their disgruntlement. “We can use our independent candidates as chips
to recover lost ground,” said one partner.
“We can simply turn our back on the alliance and proceed as
independents now that the nomination court has closed.
“We can as well join other parties merely for propaganda
purposes against Chamisa.
“The only way Chamisa can recover our support is if he
makes a strong showing against Zanu-PF, itself a tall order, to then dangle
sinecures of office post-elections.
“In the event of a hung result, again unlikely, Chamisa
will then realise how badly he needed to carry the goodwill of us little
parties.”
Mr Chamisa’s actions have already given Zanu-PF a head
start by way of an uncontested parliamentary seat in Insiza North and several
council wards.
Said an alliance partner: “The Insiza case is interesting.
It makes nonsense of (Morgan) Komichi’s claim that they dropped weak candidates
from alliance partners to improve their chances.
“Who doesn’t know that Dumiso Dabengwa is moribund
politically, in fact, more dead than Welshman Ncube to give Zanu-PF any real
contest in Insiza North. It is about punishing rebels in order to thwart future
rebellions which look all the more likely.”
Mr Chamisa’s camp said it would support a ZAPU candidate in
Insiza North.
The camp is also contesting Prof Ncube’s candidates in two
Mazowe constituencies.
Another alliance partner, Transform Zimbabwe, which was
allocated 12 seats, will battle it out with MDC-T candidates in six of its constituencies.
Zanu-Ndonga was allocated one seat in Chipinge under the
alliance, but using its big brother mentality, MDC-T grabbed the seat. This
effectively means that the party is in the alliance only for the sake of it.
MDC-T initially was allocated 114 seats under the alliance
agreement, but by last Thursday, it had breached the 150 threshhold. The party
grabbed 14 seats from Prof Ncube’s MDC and allocated two to Mr Biti’s PDP
seats, before robbing PDP of the other seat. Herald
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