DEFENCE deputy minister and Zanu PF political commissar
Victor Matemadanda inadvertently spilled the beans on vote-rigging when he
lashed out at his party’s Midlands provincial leadership over poor performance
at last year’s disputed elections, top MDC officials have said.
Zanu PF garnered 23 parliamentary seats in Midlands in last
year’s polls, while the opposition MDC got four — Mbizo, Gweru Urban,
Chiwundura and Mkoba.
Kwekwe Central was won by the National Patriotic Front
party’s Masango Matambanadzo.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa got 352 027 votes, while MDC’s
Nelson Chamisa amassed 257 960 votes in the presidential vote.
However, on Saturday, Matemadanda seethed with anger while
addressing the Midlands Zanu PF provincial co-ordinating committee meeting in
Gweru, accusing party leaders of presiding over what he termed dismal
performance in the last
polls.
He later threatened to dissolve the whole provincial
executive led by Daniel Mackenzie Ncube, saying it was failing to grow the
party’s membership base and roll out programmes to drum up support for
Mnangagwa.
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Yesterday, MDC deputy spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka and
national secretary for elections, Jacob Mafume, said Matemadanda’s rants had
validated their position that last year’s polls were rigged.
“Matemadanda’s comments vindicate our position that the
last election was pilfered. Otherwise, why would he have said they performed
dismally when they claim to have ‘won’ exactly the same seats in 2013.
Remember, this is the same party that claimed victory in 2008 before (the late
former President Robert) Mugabe went public several years later to state (the
late) president Morgan Tsvangirai won the elections by 73% of the vote,”
Tamborinyoka said.
Mafume said Matemadanda’s ranting showed that the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission results for Midlands were fake.
“The performance of Zanu PF in Midlands (therefore) is
fake. It is a result of rigging, terror and unmitigated chicanery … Chamisa,
overall, won the votes by 2,6 million votes,” he said.
The MDC has since last year sustained its position that the
2018 elections were rigged and has refused to recognise Mnangagwa as the
legitimate president of the country.
Exiled former Zanu PF strategist Jonathan Moyo in his book
Excelgate says Zanu PF rigged last year’s elections and Chamisa won the
presidential elections by 2,6 million votes.
Zanu PF has, however, rubbished reports that it stole the
election.
MDC spokesperson Daniel Molokele said Matemadanda could
have spoken subconsciously.
“It looks like he knows the real results, not the fake ones
which were announced. So he might have been speaking subconsciously about
something which actually happened compared to what we were told happened. The
real results are probably different (from those announced by Zec),” Molokele
said. Newsday
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