Inept opposition, Zanu PF’s greatest gift

Harare Bureau

AHEAD of the August harmonised elections, an “unstrategic” and “silly” opposition is ZANU PF’s greatest gift, whose ineptitude has earned the ruling party three parliamentary seats and close to 100 wards without breaking sweat.

Yesterday, the High Court ruled against 12 aspiring CCC legislators who had submitted their nomination papers to the Nomination Court well after the deadline, drawing the expected brickbats from the opposition.

However, President Mnangagwa’s spokesperson Mr George Charamba pooh-pooped the opposition’s desperate wailing especially as it came from a party that is led by supposedly competent lawyers, notably its spokesperson Advocate Fadzai Mahere. “For a lawyer to pass such a thoughtless comment is remarkably lamentable, maybe it bears testimony that God’s gift to ZANU PF is a thoughtless unstrategic and unambiguously silly opposition,” said Mr Charamba.

Waving his strategic ambiguity approach to politics, CCC leader Mr Nelson Chamisa took charge of all the party’s processes, submitting nomination papers for prospective candidates for this year’s elections either on the 11th hour or even after.

This was after a chaotic candidate selection process that saw him handpicking his preferred candidates, also based on the same ambiguous ambiguity principle, and resultantly in the fielding of double or triple candidates, a scenario that favours Zanu PF.

This spectacularly boomeranged in Bulawayo Province where his dozen prospective candidates could not access the signed nomination papers, as per requirements of the law, leading to their failure to meet the 4pm deadline. As matters stand, the ruling party has won elections unopposed in 91 wards and with the three in Bulawayo; the lead is increasing with analysts laying the blame on Mr Chamisa and his strategic ambiguity.

The Nomination Court sat on June 21 to accept papers from aspiring candidates, on the next day the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) sat to accommodate some aspiring candidates who had failed to file their papers on time. That position was yesterday declared null and void by the High Court, with ZEC, which had since published the final list of candidates participating in the harmonised elections, being ordered not to include the names of the aspiring candidates on the ballot.

Among ZANU PF candidates now elected unopposed is Finance Minister Prof Mthuli Ncube, who was set to face the CCC’s Pashor Sibanda in Cowdray Park.

Among other seats, ZANU PF has also won unopposed in Bulawayo Central where Cde Tendayi Charuka was to face the CCC’s Mr Surrender Kapoikilu and Bulawayo South where Cde Rajeshkumari Modi was to face the now disqualified CCC’s Ms Jane Nicola Watson.