Zanu-PF cranks election gears

Zanu-PF has taken its 2018 harmonised election preparations a gear up with the setting of a special committee of senior officials to chart a winning strategy and message for the party, nearly a year before the vote is due.

Already President Mugabe is on a nationwide tour to meet youths in what has been described as a strategic de facto mass mobilisation of young voters — a key demographic group tipped to have a huge influence in the election outcome. Also the Zanu-PF Women's League will soon embark on massive support mobilisation meetings, led by its secretary and First Lady Dr Grace Mugabe, for the party and its Presidential election candidate, President Mugabe.

Our Harare Bureau understands that President Mugabe is also expected to address countrywide Star Rallies in a final push for votes reminiscent of the 10 provincial rallies he headlined ahead of the last harmonised elections. Having already delivered on most of its 2013 election campaign promises, the party is now devising another winning formula for the key 2018 plebiscite.

The party's Politburo has appointed a high level committee to draw up the 2018 election manifesto, chaired by national secretary for Information and Publicity Ambassador Simon Khaya Moyo. Apart from drafting the election manifesto, the committee will also devise communication strategies to ensure maximum penetration of the party's campaign message.

Among the strategies under consideration is how the party could harness the social media reach to harvest votes from young urbanites. Amb Khaya Moyo yesterday said that: "The Politburo has appointed a working committee that is working on the election manifesto and all the other material that we intend to use for our 2018 election campaign. I chair the committee in my capacity as the Secretary for Information and Publicity. It is a very high powered committee of senior officials whose names I cannot give to the press. Obviously we cannot disclose our strategy for the election, but we have already covered a lot of ground with regard to our message and overall strategy. We are not discounting any form of communication media, including social media, which is important in getting our message to the young voters. When we are finished we will tell you and we will have a proper launch like we have always done in previous campaigns."

Ambassador Khaya-Moyo said while the ongoing Presidential Youth Interface meetings were not the party's election campaign proper, they form part of the broader campaign strategy which is being engineered by the youth leadership.

"In their wisdom the youths decided that it was best that the President meets them in their individual provinces as a follow up to the One-Million Man March meeting they had in Harare. This would give them an opportunity to interface with the President so that he can hear their challenges and grievances so that they can be addressed. This is befitting because the youth are the vanguard and future of the party and tomorrow belongs to them.

"No one else is best suited to give them guidance other than the President himself, given his remarkable attributes, experience, discipline, work ethic and as an icon of our liberation struggle. Proper rallies for the election campaign will obviously come at a later stage. We will have proper star rallies where the president will deliver our election message to the masses. That has to come out when we have worked out the necessary preparations including the manifesto which will guide our general campaign message. What we do not want is to confuse the election programme and the youth programme."

He said the party would go into the next campaign as a united force despite difference of opinions among some members.

"When you have a massive party the size of Zanu-PF naturally there will be disagreements and that is democracy and not lack of unity. The party is generally united and ready to fight in the election as one family as was enunciated by President Mugabe at the Marondera rally. What we want is internal democracy where we can agree to disagree; what we don't want is factionalism. As a party we always talk about these things and the President has been at the forefront of condemning such practices."

On the introduction of biometric voter registration technology Ambassador Khaya-Moyo said: "Of course it is good that they are introducing biometric voter registration. We can't go manually all the time, we need to move with the times. Every party is supporting the introduction of the technology and that includes us as Zanu-PF. What we disagree with is the notion by some parties that procurement of the technology should be handled by outsiders. How can we have our elections handled by outsiders? We have run elections before and have shown that we are very much capable of running a free, fair and transparent election."