CCC wants to have its cake, eat it, and spare another for later

Fungi Kwaramba Zimpapers Elections Desk

FOR anyone with principles, it must have been a humiliating moment to be sworn-in as a CCC legislator given that your party described the elections that produced that outcome as a sham, but it seems the opposition speaks in forked tongues and only accept results when they go their way.

If the world wants to appreciate the duplicity of CCC, it should read how the opposition readily accepts the results when they win and cry foul when they lose, a potent threat to democracy because to nourish that ideal one must accept any outcome.

If the elections were a sham, as purported by CCC leader Mr Chamisa, why did his legislators yesterday grab the front row seats, dressed in their best outfits in the New Parliament just outside Harare, hugged and smiled triumphantly?

If the elections were rigged, why did councillors from the CCC like David Coltart take oath of office in the city of Bulawayo where the opposition swept to victory?

If the elections were stolen why did the opposition not mount a court challenge for recourse?

Is it not that Mr Chamisa declared on the eve of elections at a rally in Beitbridge that elections were beyond rigging or the opposition has been, as is its wont, playing hocus pocus with the electorate by feigning that elections were rigged when they were not, or is the opposition in typical fashion, is trying to de-legitimise the Zanu PF and President Mnangagwa win to pander to the whims and caprices of their western handlers.

But the horse has bolted and no amount of grandstanding, faith or diplomatic expeditions will reverse the outcome of the elections, which were held in accordance to the Constitution, that prescribes legitimacy to the winner in an electoral process.

Is it simply a dearth of ideas in the opposition that post every election they trump the illegality card and seek to reverse the will of the people, by way of violence or as is the case now, by enlisting the services of questionable foreign observers.

The opposition, frailties and lack of a foundational grounding is perhaps the starkest lesson to emerge from these elections, just as it has no constitution.

The opposition has no legal basis to challenge the outcome of the election and know for a fact that they lost.

This maybe explains the presence of CCC MPs in Parliament yesterday, they know they lost fair and square, but in their grandstanding fashion they would rather feed the world and their gullible supporters the cheap propaganda that the polls were rigged, giving false hope to their supporters in the mysterious hope that some divinity will shape their political lives and better their fortunes.

The elections were harmonised, presided by the same umpire, with the same contestants and producing, as far as objective observers are concerned, a democratic outcome that has been seemingly embraced by the CCC legislators, with laughable excuses, of course.

Mr Chamisa should stop leading his supporters down the garden path, he should man up, accept defeat and live to fight another day, or is he doing just that while living his ardent and blindly loyal supporters on a slippery hill of misplaced hope and faith.

Cultism has no place in contemporary faith, neither does religiosity and unbridled faith, as Milan Kudera, the Czech-French novelist put it succinctly, “too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you’ll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries”.

This perhaps should be a lesson to Mr Chamisa’s supporters, it is never about them, but beneath the sophistries and biblical quotations lies an unquenchable thirst for power driven by megalomaniac hubris.

“Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good,” that in itself is a lesson lost on many in the opposition.

Maybe there is a method in the doublespeak of Mr Chamisa, for he on multiple occasions had made it patently clear that he would not accept any other win, but his.

He said the elections will not be rigged, and he has had interviews insisting that he would win the elections whatever the odds against him.

In the bubble of over-confidence, albeit without the sound foundation to make such conclusions, he failed to budget for defeat and like in denialism he makes threadbare arguments that he won the polls without any shred of evidence, now he cannot eat his words back.

Mr Chamisa cannot fathom that he lost, but gladly accepts the parliamentary elections results, where his party garnered 73 seats against the lion’s share of ZANU PF which is 136, both elections, the Presidential and parliamentary were synchronised and presided over by the same referee, ZEC, which he now attacks.

What is good for the goose must surely be good for the gander.

He wants to have his cake, eat his cake, and keep a slice for tomorrow, as some form of currency to cling on and continue deceiving his supporters that the polls were stolen, but as was on display yesterday, the façade has worn off, and he only deceive the gullible, maybe just for a while.