MDC Alliance planned to win 2018 with 4.5m votes - failed, plan lacked even common sense

MDC Alliance leaders want to cast themselves as democrats who have embraced the democratic ethos of open and meaningful debate and democratic competition. They are not democrats and there is nothing like the threat of holding free, fair and credible elections to show them for the hypocrites they are.

"MDC bigwigs, Tendai Biti, Amos Chibaya and Morgen Komichi on Saturday said that it was unwise to change leadership before the 2023 elections," reported Zimeye.

This is laughable! When is comes to electing leaders MDC's record is no different from that of Zanu-PF.

MDC's first elective congress, where Tsvangirai emerged as president, was the nearest the party has ever got to holding free, fair and credible elections. All the other elections that followed have been a sham, Tsvangirai's name was the only one in the hat and instead of an election there was a coronation - just as Mugabe was doing in Zanu-PF.

When Tsvangirai had served his maximum two five-year terms, he had the offending clause in the party constitution rubbed out. "It was not wise to change a winning team," he argued. On the contrary, MDC had in fact blundered from pillar to post and accomplished nothing of note under his leadership.

When Tsvangirai died, Chamisa seized power in a process that never allowed any of the other two party VPs to have a look-in. Chamisa and his supporters resisted all demands for the party to hold an extra-ordinary congress to elect a new president. "The party has a president and should focus on the coming elections and not to be distracted," he argued.

As it turned out, the failure to uphold the democratic ethos of holding free, fair and credible elections was not just a distraction, the party suffered yet another fractious break up.

Ordinary MDC party members have never had any meaningful say in the elections of Nelson Chamisa as VP, it was Tsvangirai who appointed Chamisa and Mudzuri VPs used his usual dictatorial tendencies. But of all the feeble excuses to deny party members a meaningful say in the election of the leaders Tendai Biti et al takes the biscuit.

Last year it was too late to elect a new leader, Tsvangirai died 14 February 2018 and the elections were due in July 2018, hardly six months away. Now Biti and company still do not want an elective congress because Chamisa is a winning ticket, no one else will better his last year's electoral success! Douglas Mwonzora, the party's secretary general, does not agree.

"The MDC targeted 4,5 million votes (Chamisa claims that he garnered 2.6 million votes to Mnangagwa's 2.4 million), that was what was in our strategic plan. We did not achieve that. We did a very handsome score.

"But maybe those who are going to challenge him (Chamisa), if I get to challenge him, I have to prove that I can score more."

 MDC leaders have proven over the years that they are corrupt and incompetent, the lack of meaningful debate and democratic competition within the party has, as one would expect, stopped quality leaders emerging and scum to take their place. The party did not even have the common sense to implement even one democratic reform during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. It is no surprise the party's strategic plan to win 4.5 million votes was a total failure!

"On the charge that I am weak, I am not weak. I was jailed for fighting one-party state by the ZANU-PF government. I was in COPAC (parliamentary committee tasked to draft the new 2013 constitution) and was mandated to bring about a democratic people driven constitution and I delivered," Mwonzora said.

If Zimbabwe's new constitution was indeed a democratic one, then why has it failed to deliver free, fair and credible elections, it's primary objective?

Paul Mangwana, the Zanu-PF MP and COPAC co-chairperson, boasted soon after the 2013 referendum that Mugabe dictated the new constitution. One has only to look at the evidence on the ground of corrupt, rigged elections and tyrannical oppression to know Mwonzora is the proverbial frog claiming he is the one who has been putting out the forest fires with his punny fart!

The people of Zimbabwe have risked life and limb, millions were beaten and raped and over 500 were murdered in the 2008 elections alone; to elect MDC leaders into power on the understanding they will deliver the much needed democratic changes the nation was dying for. After nearly two decades on the political stage, MDC have failed to deliver even one meaningful democratic change. Not one!

The truth is MDC Alliance will never bring about any meaningful democratic changes and restore the individual freedoms and basic human rights that Zanu-PF has done so usurp and deny the people. MDC leaders are paying lip service to the fight for democratic change, what they really care about is securing absolute power for themselves. Chamisa, Biti, Mwonzora, etc., they have all learnt, just as the Zanu-PF thugs before them have done, that nothing threatens their own hold on power more than granting the masses a free and meaningful vote.

Zimbabwe is in a serious economic and political mess right now after 38 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu-PF rule. The nation has had many golden opportunities to end the Zanu-PF dictatorship but all have been wasted. The sooner the nation realised MDC leaders like Chamisa, Biti and Mwonzora are corrupt and incompetent, they will never bring about the democratic changes the nation has been dying for, the sooner the can get on with the task of searching for quality leaders who can.

"MDC had the strategic plan to win 4.5 million votes!" That is laughable; the party did not even have the common sense to demand something as basic as a verified voters' roll! So MDC had no strategic plan to stop Zanu-PF rigging the elections but had one to win the rigged elections with a landslide!