Collaboration and Cooperation key to coalition success - PDP

The start of 2016 has seen the opposition political parties being thrown to face once again the twin evils of big brother mentality and toxic competition. This worrisome trend flies in the face of what is needed which is the unity mentality and positive collaboration and cooperation.

While the People's Democratic Party (PDP) respects the right of every citizen to form a political party and or join any of their choice, the party is also cognizant of what is required for Zimbabwe to move forward. In this light, the party has been at the fore of calling for the opposition to come together under a broad coalition for the development of the nation and against the ZANU PF dictatorship.

That in 2016 some in the opposition still consider themselves to be ‘goliaths' who can single handedly defeat ZANU PF and establish the next government when they have subsequently failed to do so in 15 years, boggles the mind.

Such a big tent thinking punctuated of arrogance, exaggerated self importance, deceit and hubris cannot take Zimbabwe forward we need humility, cooperation, sincerity and thought leadership to transform this country and defeat ZANU PF.

 The signals coming from our colleagues in this regard do not inspire confidence in the people of Zimbabwe that the opposition can be able to work together for progress and to fight a common enemy. To the ordinary eye it appears that big individual egos are taking centre stage and those with these huge egos are desperate to take claim of having ‘removed ZANU PF' alone. What a tragedy!

As PDP we also want to take this opportunity to welcome comrades who split from ZANU PF and have since joined the opposition ranks and we urge them to work a show the entire country that indeed an organic split has occurred in ZANU PF.

While the opposition political terrain is slippery especially in the context of ZANU PF violence, it is fundamental that the new entrants really work towards recruiting from ZANU PF in order to increase the mass base of those opposed to Mugabe's misrule.

The PDP firmly believes in collaboration and cooperation as key to successfully dislodging ZANU PF from power and in this regard we believe in broad issue based coalitions and thus have no problems with embracing all progressive Zimbabweans. However in so doing we are always guided by humility, goodwill and sincerity instead of arrogance and big egos.

We in PDP are also very clear on the political roadmap to save our nation from the abyss, and we have captured this in our document ARREST, which is that we need first a transitional period to be governed by a National Transitional Authority (NTA) which will essentially rescue the economy from collapse, align laws to the constitution, institute national healing and level the electoral field.

We also firmly believe in a broad coalition of winners based on core issues affecting our people such as anti-privatization struggles, unemployment, under employment, access to education and health among a host other socio-economic needs of the population. In this vein we have produced an economic blue-print HOPE which articulates how we will revive the economy, restore the social contract and bring back dignity to our peoples' lives. All this is rooted in our timeless creed that ‘Another Zimbabwe is possible!'