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Midlands Bureau Chief
The MDC-T members in Midlands North have slammed their national executive for imposing Morgan Komichi to represent their party under the proportional representation as a senator. Komichi, who is MDC-T deputy national chairman and outgoing Prime Minister, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s campaign manager in the just-ended harmonised elections, is believed to be from the Sanyati area in Mashonaland West.
In interviews, the MDC-T members said their party’s national executive showed disrespect to Midlands people by imposing an outsider to represent them.
They said Midlands had many competent people who qualified to be senators under the proportional representation.
“We discussed the issue among ourselves and agreed that our leadership was only determined to serve their personal interests. It baffles the mind that our party leaders decided to overlook all the provincial leadership and even some national executive members who are from the Midlands and settled for Komichi. What is so special with this man that he can be chosen ahead of Midlands people? It is such decisions that are destroying our party,” said an MDC-T member who preferred not to be named.
Controversy appears to be part of Komichi’s life as he is in custody after he was arrested in the build-up to the 31 July harmonised elections. He was arrested after alleging that somebody picked up a sealed envelope of ballot papers in a bin and handed it to him.
Other members said MDC-T shot itself in the foot by imposing candidates in some constituencies for the just-ended harmonised elections which they lost to Zanu-PF.
They urged party leader, Mr Tsvangirai, to first engage people before coming with his list of preferred candidates.
“There should be a policy guiding the leadership on the selection of candidates to participate in any election. We cannot have outsiders coming into our territory, taking over key positions. What our leaders did is shameful. I have never heard of such a thing happening in other political parties. What I find more worrying is that we have two provinces in Midlands, Midlands North and South. It is not possible that our leaders searched for candidates in Midlands and failed to get someone suitable to take the senatorial seat given to Komichi,” said another party member.
MDC-T’s Midlands South official confirmed the challenge posed by Komichi’s nomination as a senator on a Midlands ticket.
He, however, said the matter was discussed and resolved well before the harmonised elections.
“It happens in politics. We were given Komichi by the national executive. His papers were submitted under Midlands and we discussed this at the nomination court and we concluded the issue. It’s water under the bridge now. Maybe they felt that as a top party member, Komichi needed to be given a post somehow and brought him to Midlands.
We have two provinces in the Midlands — North and South. We came up with a list of candidates that we submitted at the nomination court. The posts to be filled under the proportional representation were allocated under a Zebra system, female followed by male. We were allocated two posts because of our votes,” said the official.
Under Zimbabwe’s new constitution, 60 national assembly seats are reserved for women, 60 senators are elected through proportional representation.
The country’s 10 provinces were allocated six seats each.
Online Reporter