Opinion / Columnist
MDC-T congress closer than national polls
02 Jul 2016 at 12:02hrs | Views
SPECIMEN NUMBER ONE:
"Zimbabweans should brace themselves for early polls as the escalating factional and succession wars that are devouring the post-congress zanu-pf could soon see the ruling party imploding completely, former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC says.
"Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily News yesterday, MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu said that it was clear zanu-pf was on the verge of a complete collapse due to its internal wars, as 91-year-old President Robert Mugabe fails to douse the deadly ructions.
"The next elections might actually happen earlier than 2018. You all realise how zanu-pf is collapsing like a deck of cards and some of us are confident that 2018 could actually be very far," Gutu said.
" . . . Gutu said while the beckoning implosion of zanu-pf would be an important political development in the country, his party was in the meantime working tirelessly to ensure that critical electoral reforms were implemented before the holding of the next elections. 'Our plans for 2018 are very clear . . . without reforms no elections,' he said emphatically."
SPECIMEN NUMBER TWO:
"The country's main opposition, former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC, has predicted that Zimbabwe will go for its next national elections well before 2018 as the prevailing dire economic situation in the country can now only be dealt with through the ballot.
"Speaking at a lively Daily News discussion forum in Harare yesterday, MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu said while he was 'not a prophet who had the power to divine the future', all indications were that President Robert Mugabe and his ruling zanu-pf 'are on their knees' and that 'the regime has completely run out of ideas' to mitigate the suffering of the majority of Zimbabweans.
"The way I look at it, I don't see this Government, in whatever form it exists, lasting between now and 2018 . . .
"'I believe that the next elections are going to come earlier than 2018. I am even willing to bet my last bond note on this," he said.
Deluded news
Analysing the two specimens cited above should be an easy task. There are just too many similarities between them, only one was published in 2015 and the other just this past week, in June 2016. The medium is the same; the message is the same and the medium is the message.
We are sure students of journalism are aware of that tenet latterly cited. That goes without saying, the medium — the newspaper that carried the two articles — is synonymous with the opposition MDC-T, hence the oft-used and deserved appellation of it as "opposition media" or "mouthpiece".
But these incestuous cousins also share another characteristic — that of being deluded.
Obert Gutu is a deluded guy who likes to hear the sound of his voice. He ranks as one of the loudest — and most hollow — voices in political spokesmanship to date: and we all know what being hollow and loud means.
Loudness is also associated with madness and in a figurative sense we know that a madman is one that does the same thing and expects different results.
First of all, the delusion of the medium and the message.
The opposition and its incestuous cousins, the opposition media, are so desperate that they want to see regime change that their funders in the west engaged them to pursue.
They have tried every trick in the book — one as a political party of sorts and the other as its propaganda mouthpiece.
They all have been mutually fluxed and pampered with cash (at least in most critical times) and in their weird acts they have equally been praised and cheered on by their handlers.
This is why the two institutions often display shocking levels of mutual delusion.
For, were it not that, would any serious paper not baulk at repeating the same delusions of one Obert Gutu, almost to the letter in a space of six months and all to ringing vacuity?
It is clear that Obert Gutu in both texts is talking nonsense, first because there are no reasonable grounds to hold fresh elections, especially on the supposed implosion of zanu-pf or the current economic challenges.
Both the institution of zanu-pf and Zimbabweans as a populace are made of sterner stuff and that is why they, on the part of the former, survived a lot of internal contradictions; and on the part of the populace, sanctions that the MDC-T invited from the West to hurt the people into voting out zanu-pf.
Who forgets those hard times when Western envoys would cheer as "screws tightened" on Zimbabwe with the likes of Christopher Dell and James McGee actually giving timelines on the collapse of Zimbabwe due to a humanitarian disaster?
But we survived.
Zimbabwe and its people will survive despite the current challenges and dynamics within the ruling party.
The MDC-T and its spokespersons and mouthpieces can pray and even pretend to be prophets, if they so wish, but the Western-driven regime change they seek can but wait.
What is clear is that with the situation of MDC-T ailing leader Morgan Tsvangirai at hand, we are closer to witnessing an extraordinary election in the party than a national election.
The M word
We have illustrated how politically deluded the paper and the spokesperson of its incestuous cousins are. The paper has an extra strain called delusions of grandeur. In simple terms, this is "a false impression of one's own importance".
Some texts say it is "an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary".
That is what the paper, which this week celebrated its recent opening five years ago wants everyone to believe.
It also wants everyone to believe that it suffered a "forced and unjust closure by President Robert Mugabe's Government in September 2003" when everybody knows that the paper literally closed itself by refusing to comply with the laws of the land, demanding registration principally, when all other papers, even the private and opposition-linked ones did.
The paper came back on the streets when it did the right, statutory thing, like everyone else.
How the paper seeks to hype and live its lie is just astounding to the point of nauseating.
This week the paper was in its element and on Wednesday the paper's Group Editor, Stanley Gama, went an embarrassing notch up in a piece titled, "Daily News: Zero to hero" in which he divined that, " . . . our stunning comeback, like (rank outsider, title-winning English soccer team) Leicester's victory, has got to be Zimbabwe's greatest media story of all time."
So fraught with such embarrassing and nauseating self-pleasuring that one reader, in the comments feed on the paper's website found it prudent to comment thus: " . . . methinks that sometimes they get a little too big for their breeches. Let someone pat you on the back. Doing it yourself looks suspiciously like a weird act of masturbation."
Ouch!
But we were all disgusted, were we not (especially when we all know better about circulation figures and advertiser preferences?)
"Zimbabweans should brace themselves for early polls as the escalating factional and succession wars that are devouring the post-congress zanu-pf could soon see the ruling party imploding completely, former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC says.
"Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily News yesterday, MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu said that it was clear zanu-pf was on the verge of a complete collapse due to its internal wars, as 91-year-old President Robert Mugabe fails to douse the deadly ructions.
"The next elections might actually happen earlier than 2018. You all realise how zanu-pf is collapsing like a deck of cards and some of us are confident that 2018 could actually be very far," Gutu said.
" . . . Gutu said while the beckoning implosion of zanu-pf would be an important political development in the country, his party was in the meantime working tirelessly to ensure that critical electoral reforms were implemented before the holding of the next elections. 'Our plans for 2018 are very clear . . . without reforms no elections,' he said emphatically."
SPECIMEN NUMBER TWO:
"The country's main opposition, former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC, has predicted that Zimbabwe will go for its next national elections well before 2018 as the prevailing dire economic situation in the country can now only be dealt with through the ballot.
"Speaking at a lively Daily News discussion forum in Harare yesterday, MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu said while he was 'not a prophet who had the power to divine the future', all indications were that President Robert Mugabe and his ruling zanu-pf 'are on their knees' and that 'the regime has completely run out of ideas' to mitigate the suffering of the majority of Zimbabweans.
"The way I look at it, I don't see this Government, in whatever form it exists, lasting between now and 2018 . . .
"'I believe that the next elections are going to come earlier than 2018. I am even willing to bet my last bond note on this," he said.
Deluded news
Analysing the two specimens cited above should be an easy task. There are just too many similarities between them, only one was published in 2015 and the other just this past week, in June 2016. The medium is the same; the message is the same and the medium is the message.
We are sure students of journalism are aware of that tenet latterly cited. That goes without saying, the medium — the newspaper that carried the two articles — is synonymous with the opposition MDC-T, hence the oft-used and deserved appellation of it as "opposition media" or "mouthpiece".
But these incestuous cousins also share another characteristic — that of being deluded.
Obert Gutu is a deluded guy who likes to hear the sound of his voice. He ranks as one of the loudest — and most hollow — voices in political spokesmanship to date: and we all know what being hollow and loud means.
Loudness is also associated with madness and in a figurative sense we know that a madman is one that does the same thing and expects different results.
First of all, the delusion of the medium and the message.
The opposition and its incestuous cousins, the opposition media, are so desperate that they want to see regime change that their funders in the west engaged them to pursue.
They have tried every trick in the book — one as a political party of sorts and the other as its propaganda mouthpiece.
They all have been mutually fluxed and pampered with cash (at least in most critical times) and in their weird acts they have equally been praised and cheered on by their handlers.
This is why the two institutions often display shocking levels of mutual delusion.
For, were it not that, would any serious paper not baulk at repeating the same delusions of one Obert Gutu, almost to the letter in a space of six months and all to ringing vacuity?
It is clear that Obert Gutu in both texts is talking nonsense, first because there are no reasonable grounds to hold fresh elections, especially on the supposed implosion of zanu-pf or the current economic challenges.
Both the institution of zanu-pf and Zimbabweans as a populace are made of sterner stuff and that is why they, on the part of the former, survived a lot of internal contradictions; and on the part of the populace, sanctions that the MDC-T invited from the West to hurt the people into voting out zanu-pf.
Who forgets those hard times when Western envoys would cheer as "screws tightened" on Zimbabwe with the likes of Christopher Dell and James McGee actually giving timelines on the collapse of Zimbabwe due to a humanitarian disaster?
But we survived.
Zimbabwe and its people will survive despite the current challenges and dynamics within the ruling party.
The MDC-T and its spokespersons and mouthpieces can pray and even pretend to be prophets, if they so wish, but the Western-driven regime change they seek can but wait.
What is clear is that with the situation of MDC-T ailing leader Morgan Tsvangirai at hand, we are closer to witnessing an extraordinary election in the party than a national election.
The M word
We have illustrated how politically deluded the paper and the spokesperson of its incestuous cousins are. The paper has an extra strain called delusions of grandeur. In simple terms, this is "a false impression of one's own importance".
Some texts say it is "an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary".
That is what the paper, which this week celebrated its recent opening five years ago wants everyone to believe.
It also wants everyone to believe that it suffered a "forced and unjust closure by President Robert Mugabe's Government in September 2003" when everybody knows that the paper literally closed itself by refusing to comply with the laws of the land, demanding registration principally, when all other papers, even the private and opposition-linked ones did.
The paper came back on the streets when it did the right, statutory thing, like everyone else.
How the paper seeks to hype and live its lie is just astounding to the point of nauseating.
This week the paper was in its element and on Wednesday the paper's Group Editor, Stanley Gama, went an embarrassing notch up in a piece titled, "Daily News: Zero to hero" in which he divined that, " . . . our stunning comeback, like (rank outsider, title-winning English soccer team) Leicester's victory, has got to be Zimbabwe's greatest media story of all time."
So fraught with such embarrassing and nauseating self-pleasuring that one reader, in the comments feed on the paper's website found it prudent to comment thus: " . . . methinks that sometimes they get a little too big for their breeches. Let someone pat you on the back. Doing it yourself looks suspiciously like a weird act of masturbation."
Ouch!
But we were all disgusted, were we not (especially when we all know better about circulation figures and advertiser preferences?)
Source - the ehrald
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