Bells toll for CCC as poll looms

It must be a hard ask and a toll order to have a sound and effective campaign for the 23 August 2023 harmonised general election if only five years ago you were the presidential candidate of a coalition of various political parties in an alliance called the MDC-A forged by Morgan Tsvangirai with Prof Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti, Jacob Ngarivhume and Job Sikhala - among others - and endorsed by a cross-section of disgruntled Zanu-PF elements following the November 2017 military, which you yourself actively supported before, during and after the fact;

yet now you find yourself without the broad-based political base you had in 2018; now that you're a presidential candidate of an opaque political party with no address, no constitution and no structures, and for which you personally receive only cash donations which you safely 'bank' at home in a box under a bed because - with no address, no constitution and no structures - your party cannot have a bank account, a fact that has put off and scared away your-would-be donors;

and because of all this, your law chambers have for all intents and purposes become your party's address if not office, and - as witnessed during your party's controversial candidate selection process when you replaced winners with losers or when you connived with some candidates to defeat other candidates you wanted to purge leaving the victims with no constitutional recourse within your party - you personally have become your party's de facto constitution and its only structure with power and authority and its cash account;

in essence, you are CCC itself, you're the party; the fact that you're all these things rolled into one wreaked havoc for your party on nomination day, 21 June 2023, when your party ended up with triple and double candidates and even worse - because you had to approve every nomination paper and to pay for all the nomination fees from the cash box under a bed at your home - the ensuing disorganisation caused your party to fail to file with the Nomination Court its party list of its 10 candidates for the Bulawayo metropolitan council;

your party has since approached the High Court in Bulawayo hoping to rescue these 10 candidates;

shockingly, all of your party's 12 constituency candidates failed to lodge valid nomination papers with the Nomination Court by the time it duly closed at 4 pm on nomination day 21 June 2023 after it started receiving nomination papers on 10 June 2023;

in fact, some of your constituency candidates in Bulawayo - such as Gift Siziva - illegally filed their nomination papers or illegally paid their nomination fees on 22 June 2023, which was by law not a nomination day; you're aware that the nomination papers of 87 of Douglas Mwonzora's constituency candidates were thrown out after they failed to pay their nomination fees on nomination day;

no wonder all of your 12 constituency candidates have been sued by voters in Bulawayo who have approached the High Court there to nullify the nomination of all candidates who illegally filed their nomination papers out of time;

so, as your unlaunched party prepares to launch its election campaign this Sunday, it is enveloped by a cloud of general disorganisation, and uncertainty over the fate of its 10 party list candidates for the Bulawayo metropolitan council and over its 12 constituency candidates in Bulawayo whose disputed nomination cases will be heard by the Bulawayo High Court on Wednesday 19 July 2023;

in your position where you're handling everything without a constitutionally defined support structure - with 39 days to go before polling day - it must be a hard ask and a toll order to put together and fund a sound and effective general election campaign for yourself and for your local authority and parliamentary candidates, as the 23 August 2023 harmonised general election looms, with gloomy pre-election surveys like Afrobarometer as bells toll for CCC; but of course, and this is very important when it comes to elections it's never over until it's over!