Chronicle Editor
Wallace Musakanyi – [email protected]
As the country’s harmonised elections draw closer, political parties are pre-occupied with mobilisation activities that feed into their respective campaigns as the wrestle for power reaches boiling point.
Part of the key fundamentals of winning the elections relates to a well-crafted political strategy that is appealing to the electorate.
In that regard, the opposition party Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has declared that their strategy for the upcoming harmonised elections is underpinned by the central attributes of “strategic ambiguity”.
In essence, strategic ambiguity refers to a deliberate political communication strategy which is usually employed by political actors in a move to intentionally create uncertainty, vagueness, or multiple possible interpretation in their messages or actions.
The end goal of this political strategy tool is to deceive political opponents while making calculated rollout plans that are full of formidable, charming as well as resounding surprises.
CCC leader Mr Nelson Chamisa and his party leadership have on various platforms said their 2023 campaign is unique and distinct because of the fact that they were fully embracing the core tenets of strategic ambiguity.
They have justified this position through their modus operandi which has seen most of their operations that include their party structures and local leadership, candidate selection process, manifesto as well as their roadmap being implemented clandestinely ahead of the elections which are a few weeks away.
An objective, analytical and rigorous examination of the state of affairs in the CCC camp can actually unravel that their affairs do not fall within the confines of strategic ambiguity but the party is actually resorting to an ambiguous strategy.
In the political context, an ambiguous strategy is usually implemented by incapable political leaders and is characterised by lack of clarity, precision, conflict of interest as well as flowery and yet vague language.
In fact, CCC leadership has been using the term strategic ambiguity as a scapegoat to justify their political incapacity, mediocrity and nepotism which fall within the margins of their ambiguous strategy.
Pursuant to their strategy, the opposition party crucified democracy in the name of implementing this shadow strategy.
CCC’s ambiguous strategy is reflective in its conduct of political as well as internal electoral processes. For instance, the Nomination Court sat on 21 June 2023 and the ruling party won 74 local authority seats because the opposition failed to field candidates.
It is testament to the fact that the opposition is unstrategic, clothed in the high quality robe of mediocrity.
They are not concealing anything but it is a straight fact that they have nothing to show and nothing to hide too.
Strategic ambiguity is actually alien to the political dictionary of CCC, nevertheless, the opposition politicians have devalued and inflated this term which is common in the fields of Strategic Studies or International Relations to vagueness.
An in-depth examination of their candidate selection process suffices to say there was dearth of democracy and transparency which flawed the entire process.
The process was four phased and was comprised of the following stages, that is, nomination of candidates, verification, interviews and lastly ratification of candidates by the CCC’s National Executive Committee.
There was a false representation that the so-called citizens were in charge of the candidate selection process when the entire process was undemocratic and a reward to Mr Chamisa’s loyalists while transparency and credibility paid the price.
Lest we forget about the Harare East fiasco where the fractured CCC party almost reached the brink of collapse as Tendai Biti and Allan Rusty Markham wrestled for the seat.
Their campaign trail was characterised by smear campaign and character assassination which sow the seeds of factions and disunity.
As if this was not enough, part of their self-proclaimed strategic ambiguity campaign strategy also insinuates that for 2023, the CCC is resorting and focusing more on a Presidential campaign emanating from the basis that they have been visible in Parliament, urban and rural council since the inception of the opposition in the early 2000s.
Their strategy is a boomerang effect to Mr Chamisa’s hallucination driven presidential aspirations because it cast a blind eye towards wards and constituencies as geographical areas of influence where they can harvest votes.
In addition to the above, their party is bereft of structures which add weight to their ambiguous strategy taking into consideration that political structures are a pre-requisite of a political organisation that is determined to win elections.
More so, structures serve as the nucleus and heartbeat of political institutions mandated with the obligation of facilitating the horizontal and vertical spread of power, political ideology and influence, drumming up support and mobilisation.
This is outlandish to the CCC as theirs is a structureless grouping that is operating courtesy of a doom-oriented ambiguous strategy.
CCC mistook strategic ambiguity for ambiguous strategy, which is evidenced by their way of politicking. This is because the party is philosophically and ideologically bankrupt. It is also strategically handicapped.
In fact, the party is not masking anything in sync with the fundamentals of strategic ambiguity but it has nothing to show to the electorate.
l Wallace Musakanyi writes in his own capacity can be contacted on [email protected].
Online Reporter