Opinion / Columnist
'We want Grace VP for whole nation,' says Chipanga - demagogue diktat days are over!
06 Nov 2017 at 15:11hrs | Views
"We want Grace to be vice president of the whole nation," said Zanu PF Youth leader, Chipanga.
We! Who is "we"? Just because we live in President Mugabe's Zimbabwe in which we, the ordinary people, have never been granted our freedoms and basic human rights including the right to a meaningful say on who rules the country does not mean approve what is going on here. If Grace wants to be VP and then President of Zimbabwe, she must win the people of Zimbabwe's mandate in a free, fair and credible election!
No, to flawed and rigged elections!
Chipanga is just another Zanu PF dimwit, a willing tool in the dictator's hands, singing for his supper. It is disconcerting that even now with all the evidence of the tragic consequences of the decades of Zanu PF misrule, people like Chipanga should still continue to prop up the Zanu PF dictatorship.
Zimbabwe is in serious political and economic trouble. Unemployment has soared to 90% and 72.3% of our people now live on US$1.00 or less a day because of 37 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption. The situation is socially and morally unacceptable and economically and politically unsustainable. And yet Mugabe and his cronies continue in their corrupt ways and have spent the last four years fighting each other over who will succeed Mugabe and completely ignored the economic reality affecting millions of our people. The economic meltdown has not gone away; indeed, the situation has got worse and worse.
Dictators are good at imposing their own selfish agenda on the nation regardless of how irrelevant or, worse still, a calculated diversion it may be to the common cause. Zanu PF's succession wars have dominated the national debate for decades now and yet, compared to the economy, the subject is as inconsequential to the people as the ranging red-eye storm on Saturn!
What the people have been hungering for is that something done to end their abject poverty, the collapsed health and education services, the lack of clean running water and power cuts, etc. After decades of being ignored, the only sure way to have our economic concerns finally addressed for us to demand the implementation of all the democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections.
If we do not do something to stop next year's elections going ahead with no reforms in place to stop Zanu PF rigging the vote; then Zanu PF will rig the vote to secure yet another landslide victory. After that the party can then impose who so ever it pleases as president!
If we cannot stop the flawed and illegal elections going ahead, given the MDC and the rest in the opposition camp have already said they will contest the elections regardless how flawed the process happened to be; then we must show the whole world that the elections are a sham.
It is already clear that ZEC will not register 7 million voters in the allocated four month; so, hundreds of thousands of would be voters will be disenfranchised straight away. But worse still, ZEC will not have the time to produce a verified voters' roll in time for the elections. The regime has failed to produce a verified voters' roll in the past and used that as cover to commit all manner of vote rigging shenanigans! There are minimum stands, red lines, that must be met for elections to be judge free, fair and credible; the production of a verified voters' roll is one such red-line!
Mugabe has only been able to impose himself, his regime and his selfish agendas on the nation because he was able to rig the vote and thus deny the people a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Stop Mugabe rigging the elections and for the first time in Zimbabwe's history, the people, the ordinary people, will seize back the initiative to set the national agenda and their usurped power to hold leaders to democratic account.
Have free, fair and credible elections and for the first time in Zimbabwe's history it will not be left to corrupt and brainwashed Zanu PF demagogues like Chipanga to decide for us all who will be the next president of Zimbabwe. Let Mugabe and his cronies fight over which party faction inherit the Zanu PF dictatorship. We the people have our own fish to fry; we must concentrate on getting the democratic reforms implemented so we have free, fair and credible elections!
We! Who is "we"? Just because we live in President Mugabe's Zimbabwe in which we, the ordinary people, have never been granted our freedoms and basic human rights including the right to a meaningful say on who rules the country does not mean approve what is going on here. If Grace wants to be VP and then President of Zimbabwe, she must win the people of Zimbabwe's mandate in a free, fair and credible election!
No, to flawed and rigged elections!
Chipanga is just another Zanu PF dimwit, a willing tool in the dictator's hands, singing for his supper. It is disconcerting that even now with all the evidence of the tragic consequences of the decades of Zanu PF misrule, people like Chipanga should still continue to prop up the Zanu PF dictatorship.
Zimbabwe is in serious political and economic trouble. Unemployment has soared to 90% and 72.3% of our people now live on US$1.00 or less a day because of 37 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption. The situation is socially and morally unacceptable and economically and politically unsustainable. And yet Mugabe and his cronies continue in their corrupt ways and have spent the last four years fighting each other over who will succeed Mugabe and completely ignored the economic reality affecting millions of our people. The economic meltdown has not gone away; indeed, the situation has got worse and worse.
Dictators are good at imposing their own selfish agenda on the nation regardless of how irrelevant or, worse still, a calculated diversion it may be to the common cause. Zanu PF's succession wars have dominated the national debate for decades now and yet, compared to the economy, the subject is as inconsequential to the people as the ranging red-eye storm on Saturn!
What the people have been hungering for is that something done to end their abject poverty, the collapsed health and education services, the lack of clean running water and power cuts, etc. After decades of being ignored, the only sure way to have our economic concerns finally addressed for us to demand the implementation of all the democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections.
If we do not do something to stop next year's elections going ahead with no reforms in place to stop Zanu PF rigging the vote; then Zanu PF will rig the vote to secure yet another landslide victory. After that the party can then impose who so ever it pleases as president!
If we cannot stop the flawed and illegal elections going ahead, given the MDC and the rest in the opposition camp have already said they will contest the elections regardless how flawed the process happened to be; then we must show the whole world that the elections are a sham.
It is already clear that ZEC will not register 7 million voters in the allocated four month; so, hundreds of thousands of would be voters will be disenfranchised straight away. But worse still, ZEC will not have the time to produce a verified voters' roll in time for the elections. The regime has failed to produce a verified voters' roll in the past and used that as cover to commit all manner of vote rigging shenanigans! There are minimum stands, red lines, that must be met for elections to be judge free, fair and credible; the production of a verified voters' roll is one such red-line!
Mugabe has only been able to impose himself, his regime and his selfish agendas on the nation because he was able to rig the vote and thus deny the people a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Stop Mugabe rigging the elections and for the first time in Zimbabwe's history, the people, the ordinary people, will seize back the initiative to set the national agenda and their usurped power to hold leaders to democratic account.
Have free, fair and credible elections and for the first time in Zimbabwe's history it will not be left to corrupt and brainwashed Zanu PF demagogues like Chipanga to decide for us all who will be the next president of Zimbabwe. Let Mugabe and his cronies fight over which party faction inherit the Zanu PF dictatorship. We the people have our own fish to fry; we must concentrate on getting the democratic reforms implemented so we have free, fair and credible elections!
Source - Patrick Guramatunhu
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