Chamisa said the newly-branded party had secured a plan to
protect the peoples’ vote, copying from Zambia where there was so much active
civic participation until Edgar Lungu conceded defeat.
Lungu had earlier claimed the polls were rigged, but
Zambians, who had camped on the streets sensing victory for Haikande Hichilema,
then opposition leader and now president, were already celebrating.
Lungu had also deployed the military, but he eventually
conceded defeat after statistics were produced and broadcast showing that
Hichilema had won the majority vote with a landslide.
“Yes, we have a plan in place. We are unstoppable. The
future looks very bright, and looks good. It’s a Good Morning effect. The sun
is about to rise, and nobody can stop the sun from rising but only God. You
can’t stop a sunrise; you may not be happy but the sun is rising, and the sun
will shine in this great country,” Chamisa told The Standard last night.
On Friday Chamisa and his deputy, Tendai Biti said the
recently formed CCC would not be “cheated” and revealed that “pro-active
measures” were in place to prevent anyone from stealing the 2023 elections.
“We won the elections in 2018 and we will win the elections
again in 2023. The only difference is that, when we won the election in 2018 we
could not secure our victory because of subjective and objective reasons but we
have since corrected those,” Chamisa told the SABC in an interview on Friday.
“Issues around what we need to do by ourselves and also the
reforms that we still need to be implementing as a country, we are pushing for
those.”
Chamisa filed a Constitutional Court application
challenging the results in a bid to overturn Mnangagwa’s 50, 8% victory but
lost the case. Chief Justice Luke Malaba, who delivered the verdict, said
Chamisa failed to provide primary evidence to invalidate the poll result.
Chamisa, who dumped the MDC Alliance brand last week after
continuously clashing with MDC- T leader Douglas Mwonzora, said the CCC was
fully aware of what it had to do to protect the 2023 vote.
“But more fundamentally we have always won elections as a
people’s movement. Mr Mnangagwa is so scared of us, they have tried every trick
in the book but we have weathered the storm,” he added.
Critics have in the past accused Chamisa of making empty
threats. In December 2019, he said his
party was going to remove Mnangagwa from power in the first five months of the
New Year. Needless to say, that did not happen.
Speaking on Twitter spaces debate on Friday, corroborated
Chamisa’s declaration, saying it did not make sense to continue crying that
elections were rigged without taking action to prevent vote fraud.
Biti said it was for that reason that the party had come up
with a plan to “safeguard” the people’s vote copying from Zambia’s UPND.
Chamisa formed the CCC on Monday after Mwonzora claimed all
MDC symbols.
Three days after the CCC launch, Mwonzora received over
ZW$150 million from the government under the Political Parties Finances Act in
what critics say was meant to spite Chamisa and oil Mwonzora’s campaign
machinery for the upcoming by-elections.
Mwonzora on Friday said his MDC Alliance was now ready to
cause an upset in next month’s by-elections.
“We received a report that our chances are bright in the
by-elections and we want to say to our detractors that elections are not won on
social media, or twitter on Facebook or WhatsApp, we are ready for the real
battle, the battle for the hearts and minds of the people of Zimbabwe,”
Mwonzora told journalists at a press conference in Harare.
Analyst and director of Research and Advocacy at Ukuthula
Trust, Brian Raftopoulos said it was remarkable that Chamisa had survived
government’s onslaught with Sadc casting a blind eye.
“It’s remarkable that they have still survived the
continuous onslaught of the state because the state has really gone at them
through the judiciary, through violence, through attack on their alliances and
of course they have had, to date, the support of the region Sadc which has
placed the question of sovereignty and liberation fellowship ahead of
democratic demands,” Raftopoulos said. Standard
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