Welshman Ncube's MDC regrouping and going strong

Welshman Ncube's MDC says it is still regrouping in a bid to map the way forward after they were shocked in the just-ended elections where they were left licking their wounds.

With President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF romping to a disputed landslide victory and the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC party picking up some reasonable seats, it was not the same for Ncube's party which managed to get only two  parliamentary seats.

Ever since the elections results were announced, the smaller MDC faction has maintained a relatively low profile in Zimbabwe's usually hot political turf.

When various election observers stampeded to announce their position on the elections including contesting political parties, it took Ncube's party almost a week f to make their position known.

When everybody thought they would also appeal to the Constitutional Court against the results they did not do so and again they glided back into their cocoons leaving Tsvangirai to fight alone in trying to prove that elections were really stolen.

But the MDC Bulawayo provincial spokesperson Edwin Ndlovu told the Daily News they were a very principled party that does not rush to make public statements without proper scrutiny.

"For the better part of the post-election period we were silent.  It is because as a party we had to sit down and strategise. We were very disturbed by the outcome so when you are angry you do not have to rush to respond. When you finally do so, you make sober comments," Ndlovu said.

Ndlovu said his party does not make individual decisions hence the need for wide consultations.

"This weekend we are having a standing committee meeting that will be chaired by party president and that will be the first time for us to seat down with the intention of finally mapping the way forward since the end of the elections.

"This meeting actually gives us the right mood for progress after we conducted provincial post-mortem meetings to verify where we really went wrong," he said.

While some who were quick to say the heavy defeat that MDC suffered spelt its end, the spokesperson had this to say: "That is just wishful thinking from detractors of our party. We are not going anywhere. We are here to stay."

Ndlovu attributed his party's defeat to lack of campaigning resources.

"Our weakest point in the elections was the issue of resources.

"We were not as funded as Zanu-PF and MDC-T were.  So it was a major setback although we had our shortcomings also as a party," he explained.

Of late there have been reports of new political parties likely to sprout and merge taking advantage of the loss of Tsvangirai who posed stiff challenge to Zanu-PF for the last 14 years.

While some political analysts have called for leadership renewal within the mainstream MDC, some have anticipated an emergence of new political party to face Zanu-PF in 2018.

But Ndlovu said his party was going to go it alone right through to the 2018 elections.

"At this stage we are not talking of forming a coalition with any party but strengthening it and correcting where we lost the plot. As for our union with Zapu it was just an electoral pact and now we no longer have any form of unity," said Ndlovu.

Concerning their  osition on Sadc, the provincial spokesperson said: "We have nothing against Sadc but what we are going to do is to be offensive and raise all the issues we have to them then we will take it from there."