MDC99 interim leader Job Sikhala and PPP leader Pastor Timothy Chiguvare. Are these the latest ponies in the Zimbabwe political landscape willing to further divide the democratic movement against the conservative Zanu PF party?
It is easy to determine the imminence of an election in Zimbabwe. The panic behaviours of political weasels and opportunists is the most consistent barometer on which to measure when elections are likely in the country.
Current and prospective leaders of the minor political formations that often mushroom or are resuscitated at each election only to vanish into obscurity immediately thereafter, indicate when elections are likely in the country.
It appears Zimbabwe is closer to elections than most of us suspect if the scramble for publicity in the minor parties and the emergence of new political formations is anything to go by.
The more resilient and most fortunate of the mediocre formations has been the MDC-M led by Professor Arthur Mutambara.
Following the split of the MDC national council on 12 October 2005 a faction loyal to then MDC Secretary General (SG) Professor Welshman Ncube felt it was academically and ideologically more sophisticated to be led by founding Party President Morgan Tsvangirai now Prime Minister and broke away.
The renegade faction invited Professor Mutambara who hitherto was not even a member of the party to take over its leadership and retained the name, emblem, regalia and slogan of the original party promising to rebrand after consolidating its position in the disputed Senate elections.
Unfortunately it did not perform as well as it thought it would and the rebranding initiative was shelved to until after the next general elections where the renegades leadership felt the formation had a better chance of gauging its strength and consolidate its grassroots support and lay claim of owning the goodwill of the divided party.
They were humiliated by the faction that remained behind the founding President’s leadership and all talk of rebranding was shelved as it became evident that without the name MDC the faction was a nonentity.
Despite the humiliating defeat it suffered in the March 2008 the faction of renegades now referred to as the MDC-M or MDC- PF to link it to its leader and its alliances and reliance on Zanu PF for political relevance, the formation remained visible courtesy of its invitation to the inter-party talks that produced the coalition government that over rewarded the faction with Ministerial positions and the 2nd Deputy Premiership now occupied by its leader.
With his insider knowledge of the coalition government Deputy Premier and MDC-PF leader Professor Mutambara was the first to panic at the realisation that both Zanu PF and MDC-T were in advanced preparedness for the elections to foreclose the coalition government tenure of office.
He slammed both the MDC-T and Zanu PF leaders for embarking on the elections course to wind up the coalition government citing continued existence of the un-conducive and uneven political and electoral landscape as well as opinion polls pointing to a landslide 88% victory for MDC-T if free and fair elections are staged.
He was forced to recoil and announce his formation’s preparedness for the elections by a barrage of accusations that he was bent on prolonging the lifespan of the coalition government for political expediency as he realised his formation had no chance of winning any seats in the next Parliament.
Taking a cue from that revived Zapu interim leader Dumiso Dabengwa joined the fray and demanded the holding of elections to wind up the Sadc and AU imposed coalition government that he accused of failing to deliver on its agreed targets and endless power bickering within its ranks.
The Zapu message resonates well with public sentiment in the country where hopes
that were raised by the reduction to near cessation of violence and stabilisation of the economy following the formation of the coalition government have been dampened by the failure to improve the economy and living standards due to unfulfilled GPA promises.
But the same public is all too aware that Zapu has no chance whatsoever of winning the elections and is just there as a spoiler party.
Mavambo Kusile Dawn (MKD) formation that has been dogged by its leader’s failure to make a clean break with his Zanu PF origins and the squabbles for control of party assets that saw Dabengwa withdrawing his crucial support for the formation and crossing over to revive Zapu as well as the delay in the party’s launch has also come out with guns blazing.
Like the Zapu leader Dumiso Dabengwa, the disputed MKD leader Dr Simba Makoni has added his overrated political voice to the call for the winding up of the coalition government and the holding of elections to allow the Zimbabwe electorate to settle the leadership paralysis in the coalition government once and for all.
He even went further to suggest that people must engage in orange style protest marches against the coalition government for its failure to address bread and butter issues confronting the generality of the populace while the parties involved concentrate on fights for power consolidation.
The MKD and Zapu leadership has a long association with Zanu PF at very senior levels and deeply mistrusted by the majority of impoverished Zimbabweans who are at a loss as to why they never stood up for the ordinary people when their former party went on a rampage against innocent citizens.
The duo is also remembered for voting in favour of draconian legislation that centralised power in the Presidency and criminalised economic entrepreneurship, freedom of expression and association and the rights to demonstrate against government excesses.
It is this reputation that makes them sound disingenuous and hard to believe when they attack the MDC-T for being power mongers when they are known to have abused power in the past.
But perhaps more telling about how close the country is to the next elections is the emergence of two rag tag political formations MDC99 and People’s progressive
Party (PPP) led by Job Sikhala and Pastor Timothy Chiguvare respectively.
Most Zimbabweans are used to the mushrooming of these hazy political outfits whenever elections are about to be staged and are not surprised at the development and even expect more to emerge shortly.
The problem these fly by night opportunistic political formations face is that the Zimbabwe electorate is no longer that easy to dupe and confuse as MDC-PF and MKD will vouch.
The Zanu PF strategy of sponsoring new parties to split the opposition vote which has always exceeded the Zanu PF popularity vote is nothing new to the electorate and the scramble for visibility gripping the obscure party formations is indicative of the intense competition for Zanu PF support in the fringe parties.
The more they denounce Zanu PF the greater their chance of receiving gagging funding from the party to tone down and direct opposition at the MDC-T to split its vote.
Announcing the formation of a new political formation in Zimbabwe at this time is ill advised and naive.
The next election is unlikely to be fought so much over issues and ideologies as it is going to be a dogfight for survival by Zanu PF.
Zanu PF refused to accept the verdict of the people in the last election and bulldozed itself into a commanding role in the coalition government none of the other two partners wanted to share with it.
After that the party has consistently thumped its nose at the electorate by deliberately refusing to implement crucial clauses of the GPA and grabbing whatever power it could even when such power was logically supposed to be under MDC-T nominees to the cabinet to exercise.
Zanu PF will have to find new methods of compelling people to vote for it given its intransigence in the coalition government and the likelihood that traditional reliance on violence may be curtailed by the restructured electoral commission, re-oriented Police Force whose loyalties may have shifted away from Zanu PF invincibility and an electorate that is better prepared to deal with the violence.
Added to this the fact that the other parties that will contest the elections have been in government during which time they have developed acquaintances with key law enforcers and will have a real say in the management of the electoral system may just prove disadvantageous for Zanu PF used to monopolising the electoral system and rigging it unsupervised.
The issues that have dominated the past elections like sanctions, national sovereignty, economic meltdown, land ownership, constitutional reforms have been significantly reconfigured by developments during the tenure of the coalition government and will not feature as highly as they did in last elections.
One issue that will come to the fore is the indigenisation of the economy and it is a battle Zanu PF is unlikely to win given its performance on the land question.
Whenever the election will be held which appears not to be in the not too distant future Zanu PF appear to have a steeper slope to climb than the MDC-T.
As for the mushrooming opportunistic formations the crumps from the main political table will be too little to give them any significant gains.
Certainly none will fare any better than the MDC-PF did in the March 2008 elections and most will not even salvage their deposits.
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