USA think tank confirms the West has 'abandoned' Tsvangirai

In an interview, senior policy analyst Marion Tupy of the Washington-based Cato Institute for Global Liberty and Prosperity said in Tsvangirai the West was betting on a wrong horse. The West have since learnt the lesson and they now expect Zimbabweans too to have learnt the les-son and look for an alternative opposition leader.

"It's true that the West has abandoned Morgan Tsvangirai its very sad but it's very true. It's like putting your money on a horse in a race hoping that he wins and then if he fails you may do it a couple of times but ultimately you decide that that person was not worth the investment," he said.

Frankly Marion Tupy was being much too kind because this was much more than a horse losing a race; this horse was paid and it went out of its way to ensure it lost the race from start to finish.

Tsvangirai was supposed to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the Global Political Agreement (GPA). The reforms were designed to dismantle the Zanu PF vote rigging machinery and deliver free, fair and credible elections. MDC had everything the party needed to ensure all the reforms were implemented;  they had the majority in parliament, had five-years of the GNU and they had the backing of SADC, the West and the whole international community. In the end MDC failed to get even one reform implemented. Not even one.

Without the reforms, Mugabe and Zanu PF were bound to rig the elections and they did just that, blatantly rigged the July 2013 elections. To go into the elections with not even one reform implemented was to plan to fail.

The only two obvious reasons MDC did not get even one reform implemented are, first of all, that the party's leaders are corrupt. Mugabe saw to it that Tsvangirai and his colleagues enjoyed all the trapping of being power and gravy train life. Tsvangirai got a $4 million Highlands mansion. And in return Tsvangirai and his MDC friends kicked the reforms into the tall grass because they knew Mugabe did not want any of them implemented.

"MDC vadzidza kudya vanyerere!" (MDC leaders have learnt to enjoy the gravy train pleasures and not rock the boat!) Was the pithy retort from Mugabe cronies mocking at MDC's new indiffer-ence to public desperate demands for them to implement the reforms!

The second reason is that MDC leaders are incompetent. Of course Tsvangirai and his MDC friends wanted to remain in government and retain their seats on the gravy train; the very fact that they expected to do so regardless of all the vote rigging by Mugabe shows just how naïve and breathtakingly incompetent they really are.

Some Zimbabweans have remained faithful to Tsvangirai and the other MDC leaders but that is only because they have never understood what the reforms are about let alone why implement-ing them is still of such critical importance to bringing about meaningful democratic change in Zimbabwe.  The day the penny finally drops; they too will understand why SADC and the West deserted Tsvangirai and MDC in droves, they too will finally desert MDC. On that day the search for competent political leaders will finally start in earnest.   
 
Being corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent are shortcomings that can be overcome by education or training; they are serious flaws in one's character that will lead the individual to repeat the same mistake again and again. If Tsvangirai was a horse then he is one with a serious physical deformity he might just as well be a three and half legged horse. He has lost three races already and the way he has blundered from pillar to post it self-evident he never had a chance. Only an idiot would still bet good money on him winning the fourth race.

Marion Tupy is right, the West made the mistake of betting on Tsvangirai, "a wrong horse"; they are certainly not going to wasting a cent backing Tsvangirai ever again, they are not idiots!