Nelson Chamisa, the MDC Alliance presidential candidate,
has courted controversy over statements that he has made at political rallies
and other public fora lately.
The statements, including political assertions and
promises, have earned him “the liar” tag that political observers say may have
tarnished his name and could dent his presidential aspirations. MDC-T
secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora (DM), however, says Chamisa is not a liar at
all and advises that people should learn to distinguish between lies and
political banter, including political exaggerations that he says should be
expected when people are campaigning. The Standard reporter Blessed Mhlanga (BM)
sat down with Mwonzora on Friday to discuss this issue and others to do with
the party’s preparedness ahead of the forthcoming elections. Below are excerpts
from the interview:
BM: Are you confident the coming elections will be free,
fair and credible?
DM: It is possible to have free and credible elections in
Zimbabwe. It is possible to implement the electoral reforms that we have been
asking for, contrary to what people have been saying. These electoral reforms
don’t require time. for example, you don’t require time to remove the military
element within the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission [Zec]. It does not require a
day to open up the media space and the democratic space. Further outstanding
issues — include the audit of the voters’ roll, external audit of the voters’
roll — that does not require time at all. We are also calling for inclusive
observation of the printing of the ballot paper, an end to the abuse of
traditional institutions as well as the military. These demands are not
difficult to fulfil at all. They simply require political will.
BM: Some people are saying some of your demands now sound
like a broken record that you have been playing for a long time, but which you
know and understand will not be fulfilled.
DM: We must never get tired of making genuine demands. The
more we repeat this message, the more it will get into the thick skull of this
junta. We should never give up. We have been persevering and it has been
bearing fruit. It may have been slow, but it has been bearing fruit and I urge
Zimbabweans to be patient and resilient.
BM: There are some who think that you are not ready for an
election. What is your response?
DM: The numbers that we have been drawing at our rallies
are there for everybody to see. We are clearly the party with the biggest
following in this country at present. Although the MDC has split, it is facing
a Zanu PF that has split into five formations. It spilt into NPP, ZimPF, UPP,
NPF, Zimbabwe Peoples First, and Zapu. The most fragmented Zanu PF in history
is what we are facing today. We are also facing a Zanu PF without a charismatic
leader. He (President Emmerson Mnangagwa) does not have oratory skills. He does
not seem to have the political mastery that [former president Robert] Mugabe
did have. So we know that one-on-one, we are facing a very weak opponent.
BM: But in the past the MDC-T has said Mnangagwa was behind
Mugabe’s electoral victories?
DM: The brutality that was perpetrated on the people in the
past elections was clearly traceable to him as Mugabe’s deputy as well as
people who today constitute the core of his establishment. But the difference
between this election and the previous elections is the presence of the
international community, Commonwealth, European Union, African Union and the
Kofi Annan foundation. All these were not welcome in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
BM: Let’s talk about the oratory and eloquence skills that
you were talking about. MDC Alliance president Nelson Chamisa has been accused
of lying most of the time he uses his oratory skills. What do you say about
this?
DM: The two are different, aren’t they? Let me go to the
oratory skills of president Chamisa. He is a man of talent and there is no
question about it. You put him in front of the people, his speaking abilities
are good and he is not disrespectful of the crowd and his opponent. Now
sometimes people confuse what you are calling lies and some political banter
and political exaggerations that happen when you do campaigns which are meant
to express a point. An example is sometimes given to its extremes and I think
this is where people have been missing it. But let’s go to some of the key
messages such as the promise to deliver spaghetti roads: I know that for
Zimbabweans to imagine a transport system as elaborate as the system in London
is something that is unimaginable. This is because Zimbabweans have set
themselves very low standards and when you have someone who gives them a vision
with such possibilities, people then think that it is not sensible. Yet it is
actually sensible and doable; it is something that other nations have achieved
and it is something that some people have actually done. On the issue of
so-called spaghetti road networks, South Africans have actually built them and
they are there for everyone to see just across the Limpopo. That is the
description of the road system that Chamisa has for a future Zimbabwe. We are
not thinking of Zimbabwe tomorrow, we are not thinking of Zimbabwe next year,
we are thinking of Zimbabwe in the long-term.
BM: The recent MDC-T primary elections have been disputed
by some of the losers who claim they were manipulated. Have these polls not
weakened the party?
DM: No, they have not. This is because the MDC system has a
safety valve. Any member who is aggrieved by the process has the right to
appeal. Right now, this afternoon we are sitting to determine 154 appeals of
members who feel for one reason or another that their rights have been
infringed. They do have that right to appeal and we hope that when we sit and
hear these appeals, we will come to justice. So the availability of an internal
remedy makes our people feel more at home in the understanding that if they are
not happy about anything they can approach the leadership and their appeals can
be heard. Most importantly, once we see that there is electoral fraud, even in
the primaries, we have made it a point that we disqualify the person who
would’ve won. We have evidence of people who attempted to cheat in the
elections, some people who tried vote-buying, some people who tried to intimidate
opponents, some people who tried to steal CVs of their opponents. Once we have
that evidence, we disqualify that person. This is different from what happened
in Zanu PF where members complained about cheating and so on and the party did
nothing about it. At MDC we always do something about it.
BM: But we have seen senior officials in the party pulling
out of the primaries, people like Jessie Majome and yet you say that you have
working safety valves?
DM: Yes, we do have such valves because we are actually in
the process of dialoguing with Majome. The problem was that she raised her
complaint and left before the complaint could be dealt with yet we were willing
to deal with the complaint. Right now the chairman’s office is actually
engaging Majome and we hope that the dialogue will yield something positive.
BM : But she says she doesn’t know anything about that
engagement.
DM: Well, the chairman’s office is actually dealing with
that, and I am not so sure if that is correct to say that she says she does not
know about the engagement. If she is right that she doesn’t know about it, then
she will soon get to know about it.
BM: There have been sentiments that there is some sense of
entitlement within the MDC-T parliamentarians who feel that they cannot be
challenged in their constituencies. Are there such MPs?
DM: A number of our MPs were defeated in the primary
elections, mostly in Harare. We have very high-profile figures who did not make
it in the primaries. We opened up this contest to every member of the party.
You do not have special rights in the party simply by virtue of being a
parliamentarian. You have the same rights as every other member, especially
when it comes to selection for the next parliament. They (incumbent MPs) do
have superior rights while they are sitting in parliament before we declare the
primary elections open. So it’s a pity if anybody has a feeling of entitlement
which they should not have.
BM: Let’s talk about resources: Zanu PF has been splashing
on huge campaign billboards and banners, can you match that?
DM: Well, we cannot match them resource-wise because they
are the government. They have access to resources including national resources.
Their president campaigns on the back of the national resource — state
resources. He uses a state helicopter, state fuel, state cars and so on and so
do his ministers. But we do not need to match them resource for resource. In
fact, we only need a quarter of what they have in order to mount a credible
fight. Yes, we do not have enough money because our money comes from the
government and they give us as and when they feel like and they abuse their
power over us. But we have other methods of getting around that disability as
the MDC.
BM: What is the real beef between Chamisa and Thokozani
Khupe?
DM: It is a regrettable development, I should confess. It
is unnecessary and we are trying to have dialogue between the two leaders. We
hope that each one of them finds the wisdom of working together and we are
confident that each one of them looks at the greater good of the Zimbabwean
people. So the efforts that we are making of engaging them hopefully will help.
Going to court, I will tell you as a lawyer of 26 years of
experience, that going to court should always be the last thing that people do.
A court yields a winner and a loser, but dialogue yields a winner and a winner
— so we are going to encourage dialogue.
BM: On the issue of the audit of the voters’ roll, Zec says
they are using inspection as an external method to audit the voters’ roll. Does
this provide for what you are calling for?
DM: Zec has always said that and [Zec chairperson] Justice
Priscilla Chigumba in particular, talks like a person who is not a judge when
it comes to that. She says that our law does not provide for external audit yet
that ought not to be the reasoning. The reasoning must be that our law does not
disallow the external audit; the law says in broad terms that Zec must do
everything that makes the election system credible and satisfactory. External
audit is one of those things, so the misinterpretation with Zec is that the law
must specifically demand that. But this is reasonable, this is international
practice, that is number one. the second one is that Zec has not provided us
with a provisional voters’ roll. We did request for it and they didn’t give us
and they are now saying they published it on their website yesterday and that which
is on the website does not comply with the law. It must be electronic, and must
be analysable. The one that is on the website is a provisional one and is not
analysable. They want to give us the final voters’ roll after nomination, yet
we need the voters’ roll now in order to campaign because this campaign is now
polling station-based. So we now need to know who is where and then we target
those people. We also want to know who is capable of nominating a candidate
because a candidate must be nominated by registered voters, but without the
voters’ roll there is no way we are able to know.
BM: The MDC-T seems wary about the strength and support
base of some of the candidates coming from other MDC Alliance partners.
DM: We have noticed that some of the Alliance partners have
provided very weak candidates who do not have a following. We have brought that
to their attention and we need candidates that are popular with the people and
that suggestion does not jeopardise the alliance at all. It is an alliance
predicated on truth telling, fair assessment on who is the best and that is
what we are doing
BM: Will this not jeopardise the interests as well as the
confidence of other alliance partners as some may question how you measured the
weakness of their candidates?
DM: We use the principle of sovereignty of the people.
After everything is said and done, it is the people on the ground who have to
decide, otherwise this alliance becomes an elite pact. We don’t want it to be
an elite pact, we want it to be something organic.
BM: Where are you standing yourself?
DM: Well, I am going to be a senator for Manicaland
province. I initially wanted to be a senator for Harare province, but opted for
Manicaland and I am going to win.
0 comments:
Post a Comment