Good gracious. The following needs to be said plainly and
bluntly.
It’s outrageous, insensitive, irresponsible, unacceptable
and objectionable in the extreme for Advocate Nelson Chamisa and his CCC to
recklessly and opportunistically respond to yesterday’s High Court
nullification of the nomination of 12 CCC parliamentary candidates in Bulawayo
province by using Matabeleland as cannon fodder to compensate for or cover up
their lack of a constitution, lack of structures, lack of a bank account,
contempt of the local community in Bulawayo where from Harare they arrogantly
imposed candidates who either are not from the community or who lost or who did
not even participate in the “community selection caucuses”.
From the court record and the High Court judgment – as well
as the abundant evidence in the public domain – it is clear that the Advocate
Chamisa and his cohort in charge of CCC deliberately and illegally got their 12
candidates to submit their nomination papers in the dead of night, well after
the Nomination Court had closed at 4pm, as a desperate and misguided strategy
of seeking to prevent or block double and triple nomination of candidates by
disgruntled CCC members who had fallen victim to Advocate Chamisa’s ‘strategic
ambiguity” approach to the (mis)management of CCC affairs.
CCC is not Matabeleland, and Matabeleland is not CCC.
There’s nothing ambiguous about what or who Matabeleland is, history is very
clear about that.
It is an open secret to CCC member in Bulawayo that if CCC
had a constitution, disgruntled members who felt cheated in the “Bereka Mwana”
selection process by the imposition of candidates, would have had recourse to
remedy their grievances; that if CCC had local structures those structures
would have better handled the candidate nomination exercise on Nomination Court
day as MDC structures used to do before; and that if CCC had a bank account the
transfer and payment of nomination fees would not have required runners from
Harare or sidekicks in Bulawayo, who delayed with the money and kept candidates
waiting to no end.
An as yet to be launched political party with no
constitution, no structures, no office bearers and no bank account cannot
operate efficiently anywhere on earth. The sooner CCC and its well-wishers grip
this fundamental, the better for them.
There’s one thing that Advocate Chamisa should understand
and it is that, if you're a political leader and you're quiet and you let your
base celebrate the nullification of 87 candidates belonging to another
opposition party for not paying nomination fees on time or through the means
preferred by @ZECzim
, you have no moral leg to stand on upon which to threaten
disorder and trouble over the nullification of the nomination of 12 of your own
candidates for submitting their nomination papers not only at night after the
Nomination Court had closed at 4 pm, but also including on the following day,
which was not a nomination day.
It is not a credible defence to say but @ZECzim
confirms that the
nomination papers were submitted on time, as if suddenly Advocate Chamisa and
CCC believe that what ZEC says is the gospel truth to be believed by all sundry
without proof or verification of the truth. The idea that for CCC, ZEC is right
only if or when it supports CCC or its position and wrong if or when it
supports political opponents of CCC, or their position is downright primitive
and ridiculous.
Finally, and this is very important, the fact that the High
Court in Bulawayo has nullified the nomination of 12 CCC candidates doe does
not mean there will be no parliamentary election contest in Bulawayo on 23
August 2023. Quite the contrary, 10 political parties and independents will
slug it out in the province, and this means that serious local parties rooted
in the local community, such as Zapu and UZA, who took the Nomination Court
seriously have a real chance to make their mark and to win some seats in nine
constituencies because only three out of the province's 12 constituencies will
go uncontested, as a result of the High Court decision.
It is utterly wrong for Advocate Chamisa and his
constitutionless, structureless, policyless political party which believes in
‘strategic ambiguity’ as the best approach to political communication inside
and outside its ranks, to either hold everyone else to ransom or to expect to
be rewarded for its self-evident incompetence and manifest disorganisation in
its handling of the nomination papers for its candidates in Bulawayo.
It’s just wrong.
The naked truth is that CCC had a clear advantage in
Bulawayo's 12 constituencies, those constituencies were there for CCC's taking.
And, like other contesting political parties, CCC had 10
days from 11 June 2023 to 21 June 2023 to submit its nomination papers for its
candidates.
But, alas, CCC decided not to submit its nomination papers
until the midnight hour on the last day of nomination, 21 June 2023; because of
Advocate Chamisa's 'strategic ambiguity' - whose main purpose is to purge CCC
of Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC old guard and the likes of Tendai Biti and Prof
Welshman Ncube, along with their unwanted associates across the country.
The 'strategic ambiguity' idea of blocking triple or double
candidate nomination by waiting till late to submit the nomination papers of
the 12 CCC candidates for Bulawayo simply did not work, not least because their
nomination papers done in Harare were fatally defective, this was discovered
late in the day, and the defective flaws needed to be corrected from Harare, as
Bulawayo structures were not involved at all.
Someone at @ZECzim
tried to play goodie
goodie by getting the Nomination Court to accept the fresh but late and thus
illegal nomination papers that had been corrected late by Harare, well after
the Court had closed.
The decision by the Bulawayo High Court to nullify the
nomination of the 12 CCC candidates has exposed the damaging cracks in Advocate Chamisa's 'strategic
ambiguity" approach, which has badly boomeranged on him, on CCC and on
ZEC. Now the chickens are coming home to roost and the only responsible thing
for Advocate Chamisa and CCC to do is to lie on the bed that they made for
themselves, without recklessly and irresponsibly using Matabeleland as cannon
fodder for a fight that has absolutely nothing to do with the region. Prof
Jonathan Moyo on Twitter
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