Chamisa’s party was formed on Monday, two days before the
January 26 nomination court sat.
It has since emerged that Norman Hlabani and Mpumelelo Moyo
were both accepted for ward 26 in Bulawayo, while Donaldson Mabutho and
Bekithemba Nyathi were accepted for ward 9, a development that has exposed
confusion in Chamisa’s new party.
Addressing journalists yesterday at the media centre in
Harare, party spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere said the double candidates saga that
had triggered social media debate was a result of “a technical glitch”.
“We guarantee the citizens that the confusion will be
resolved in a couple of hours.
With any innovation to rollout the new system, there are
bound to be technical glitches.
A total of 143 by-elections are scheduled to take place
across the country.
“We only had some minor irregularities in only three out of
143 vacancies, which present a success rate of 98%.
We obviously know that this is a transitional period of
creating a brand new machine.
For a new baby that was born on Monday, that’s not bad and
there have already been some withdrawals from two candidates in line with our
electoral law,” she said.
The CCC party distanced its leadership from the double
candidate saga. Later, one of the candidates fielded in Bulawayo, Nyathi
withdrew his nomination papers for ward 9 to pave way for Mabutho the
councillor recalled by the MDC-T led by Douglas Mwonzora in September.
Nyathi told NewsDay yesterday that these were “small
squabbles” that emanated from their party’s internal processes, adding that
they should not interfere with a bigger project for change in Zimbabwe.
“For this reason, I now throw my weight behind the party’s
preferred candidate Donaldson Mabutho.
I will also do whatever it takes for him to win ward 9.
I also want to take this opportunity to apologise to my leaders, in particular
Chamisa and his vice-president Welshman Ncube for allowing the small squabbles
to spill into the bigger picture,’’ Nyathi said.
He said he would not allow the ruling party Zanu PF to win
the council seat due to squabbling.
But Zanu PF director for information Tafadzwa Mugwadi
scoffed at the CCC gaffe saying it exposed leadership wrangles in the
opposition.
“It is within their DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that even
if they change one name to the other, chaos and confusion is their culture.
I doubt if anyone was surprised because this is not even
new, it’s just the change of name and colours but the same ideologies,” Mugwadi
said.
Human rights defender Effie Ncube warned that double
fielding of candidates could benefit the ruling Zanu PF.
“They should engage extensively so that some of these
candidates withdraw because this will give advantage to other political parties
like Zanu PF to win,’’ Ncube said. Newsday
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