adminTarget Shumba, in MOSCOW, Russia
The landslide victory by Zanu-PF in the harmonised elections on July 31 was a foregone conclusion due to the party’s popular policies, a respected Russian academic has said.Professor Vladmir Shubin said voters were disenchanted by the MDC-T because of the party’s lack of a clearly defined ideology, corruption and the numerous love scandals surrounding its figurehead and former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
He said the MDC-T was a concoction of various elements with divergent ideological standpoints and called the party “a mixed grip.”
Delivering an open lecture at one of Russia’s top universities, the People’s Friendship University’s Department of International Law recently, Prof Shubin said the policies sponsored by Zanu-PF such as the land reform and the indigenisation programme had resonance with the electorate.
President Mugabe won the presidential vote with 61,09 percent against Mr Tsvangirai’s nearly 34 percent, while in the National Assembly, Zanu-PF has 197 members compared to MDC-T’s 70, with the MDC led by Professor Welshman Ncube weighing in with two seats and one independent candidate completing the list.
“The outcome was largely expected basing from different opinion polls like that by Freedom House which predicted a win by Zanu-PF and I even talked to one of the top officials of the MDC-T way before the elections who confided in me that their party was going to lose,” Prof Shubin said.
“This is attributable to the success of the land reform exercise coupled with the Presidential Input Support Scheme to farmers. There was also a general feeling with the voters that if Tsvangirai cannot manage his personal affairs, how can he be expected to lead the country?”
There are increased calls within the MDC-T for Mr Tsvangirai to relinquish leadership of the party due to his moral blameworthiness and his failure to unseat Zanu-PF.
Prof Shubin said most Zimbabweans, including the younger generation, were enthusiastic about embracing the ruling party’s policies of indigenisation and empowerment unlike in other countries such as South Africa.
“In South Africa, they do not want land, they want shares,” said Prof Shubin, who is the Principal Research Fellow of African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences and Professor of the Russian State University for Humanities.
Prof Shubin took a swipe at some Western countries and the US who call themselves the ‘international community’ for discrediting the elections which he said were held in a peaceful environment and conducted fairly.
Those countries, he said, had no option now but to work with the Zanu-PF Government if they were to take advantage of the country’s abundant natural wealth.
Various observer missions including those from the African Union and Sadc endorsed the elections as free, fair, credible and therefore a reflection of the majority of the voters’ wishes.
“I did not hear about any serious violations during the elections,” said Prof Shubin. “The elections were violence free, no killings. But we hear that the international community condemned the election. Who is this international community?”
Prof Shubin said Zimbabwe had suffered a sustained demonisation campaign for daring to disturb the entrenched property rights which were heavily distorted in favour of the British gentry.
“The British were saying “this (GPA) is our bottom line”, he said. “I wonder in what way it was their bottom line.”
Turning to security sector reforms that the MDC-T campaigned for, Prof Shubin said nowhere in the world could the army be depoliticised since it carried out the politics of the government of the day.
Online Reporter