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FOUR years ago today, Zimbabweans went to the polls to vote for the President and their representatives in the Eighth Parliament where they overwhelmingly endorsed President Mugabe with 61 percent of the vote to MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s 34 percent; with Zanu-PF dominating the National Assembly by winning 160 of the 210 seats to the MDC-T’s paltry 49 seats.
Election 2018 is around the corner, and analysts contend Zanu-PF is bound to do a repeat on the MDC-T, and it is not difficult to understand why.
As we report elsewhere in this issue, Zanu-PF is effectively in campaign mode as evidenced by the five, highly subscribed Presidential Youth Interface Rallies organised by the Zanu-PF Youth League that have seen President Mugabe address big crowds in Mashonaland East, Manicaland, Masvingo, Matabeleland North and Mashonaland West provinces.
At the rallies President Mugabe is briefed on the challenges facing young people in each province and he also appraises them of what Government is doing to address their concerns.
The Presidential Youth Interface meetings are not just occasions for sloganeering, song and dance but are also being used by the Youth League to mobilise youths to register to vote in next year’s harmonised elections.
And all this from a Zanu-PF that has effectively kept its structures attuned to elections since its historic landslide of 2013.
Contrast this with a comatose main opposition that has been boycotting all by-elections and in so doing ceding considerable ground to Zanu-PF countrywide.
An opposition which, with less than a year to the next election, is pre-occupied with throwing brickbats at the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, instead of mobilising its membership.
This is an opposition that, instead of mobilising its structures for the vote, has been going to the extent of demoralising them by insinuating that voting is an exercise in futility on the back of spurious, unproven allegations of vote rigging.
The same opposition with a surprising sense of entitlement that sees its activists attack all and anyone who vies for the vote on the spurious claim that their candidature would divide the opposition vote in favour of Zanu-PF, as if all Zimbabweans outside Zanu-PF are duty-bound to vote for the MDC-T warts and all.
We raise these points because judging by what has been happening on the political scene, it is evident the opposition is cruising for a bruising next year and will likely cry foul despite having done nothing to threaten Zanu-PF’s electoral dominance.
MDC-T’s chances were dealt a body blow by Zanu-PF’s master-stroke of Command Agriculture, which has seen the party bring commercial and communal land into full production the past agricultural season, ensuring national food self-sufficiency for the first time since Government embarked on the historic land reform programme 18 years ago. This is why think-tanks like Afrobarometer, respected academics like Professor Stephen Chan and Gloria Gallagher, erstwhile MDC-T senior officials like Dr Toendepi Shonhe, to mention just a few have all predicted a Zanu-PF victory next year.
We hope the opposition will be magnanimous enough in defeat, and not give us the tired yarn of alleged rigging when they would have done nothing to deserve the people’s vote.
Online Reporter