MDC-T hold demo 'demanding reforms FROM ZEC' - fog of confusion over reforms has not lifted

Just as one can tell where the lion has been from those huge paw prints, one can tell what kind of individual one is dealing with from what they say.

"We are demanding electoral reforms from ZEC and as citizens and youths it is our democratic right to call for reforms from ZEC. Today is the beginning of some weekly action. In our next demonstration, we will be demanding a stop to the use of spikes by the police on motorists. We will not rest until our demands are met," said MDC-T Harare Province Youth Secretary Denford Ngadziore.

MDC-T, together with many other opposition parties in the NERA grouping, have been clamouring incessantly for electoral reforms for years now. They have never giving any details on what these reforms they are, who was to implement them, how they could be implemented, etc. It is therefore no surprise that MDC-T leaders like Ngadziore should find themselves talking nonsense.

Demanding reforms from ZEC is a meaningless statement because Justice Rita Makarau and her fellow commissioners have no power or authority to change, give, deny, etc. anything. ZEC is only the messenger carrying out the instructions they were given. Some people have been calling for the Justice and her team to be fire; Zanu PF will only appoint another team and give them the same instructions.

If we are serious about getting ZEC deliver free, fair and credible elections then we must look at implementing the constitutional and structural reforms necessary to end the undemocratic control Zanu PF has introduced over the years. These reforms should have been carried out during the GNU by MDC leaders. One of the reasons, why MDC failed to get even one reform implemented is self-evident - they did not have the foggiest idea what reforms were much less how to implement them.

Ngadziore was speaking at the wake of an MDC-T anti-ZEC demonstration in which the riot Police stepped in and dispersed the crowd using tear-gas and water cannon. MDC-T has vowed to continue with the demos demanding reforms! Even with the political will, no meaningful reforms can be agreed and implemented this late. MDC-T are just wasting time barking up the wrong tree!

Having failed to get even one reform implemented since the rigged July 2013 elections and with the grand coalition, still heralded as the game changer, now dead in the water; those in the opposition camp are desperate for something they can hold up as a success and excuse for contesting next year's flawed elections. They have hit on barking up the wrong tree - one of the MDC-T's speciality!

If Ngadziore and his fellow MDC-T wildebeest herd were not such scatter-brains then they would have seen to it that their party leaders implemented the democratic reforms during the GNU when the nation had the best chance ever to get this important task done. As for now, the MDC-T mob would be doing something useful for a change if they were to march to Harvest House, MDC-T HQ, and demand the party must stop contesting flawed elections.
Stop opposition contesting in flawed elections and Zanu PF will be forced to implement the reforms. By contesting the flawed elections, the opposition are giving the process credibility. David Coltart got these two key points rights.

"The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn't now do the obvious – withdraw from the elections," admitted Coltart in his book.

"The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility."

Ngadziore and his fellow MDC-T friends can march to ZEC offices every day for a thousand years demanding reforms they will never get any because they are barking up the wrong tree. They have no clue what the reforms are and how they are to be implemented. They will only be grandstanding, content to be doing something even when it is the wrong thing. From his demands Ngadziore is just a mouse pretending to be a lion!