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Response to David Coltart article on "Analysis of elections"
Machinda Marongwe
April 04, 2008

Firstly, I would want to agree with Coltart on the fact that the split has delayed the announcing of Tsvangirai as the president but will disagree with him on who should have been more sober and to blame for our current predicament. He shifts blame to the Mainstream MDC party (as shown by the popularity it has among both urban and rural electorate) for the split. It boggles the mind to even image anyone dare suggest that is the case. Remember that the main reason for the split had been the insistence by Welshman and others on contesting the senatorial race based on what they foolishly or unwisely considered to be democracy the notion of participating in all elections call for by the government. Now let's all not forget that the said senatorial elections were extremely unpopular with most Zimbabweans and were a creation of a constitutional amendment that enlarged parliament. I cannot blame Tsvangirai for standing by principles and insisting that the party would not stand in elections that would not add value to the nation or significantly change the political space so to speak, but just serve to legitimize the current statusquo. In fact the only reason why anyone would have contested those elections would have been for purely selfish reasons and greed for power. Now politics is much more than contesting elections, it's about standing up for the people and being able to judge the political mode correctly. The tragedy of the Mutambara led-faction is that they failed to do so at many stages in the development leading to the harmonized elections. I will just give as an example of this lack of sound judgment by the faction the fact that instead of appointing some one like Gift Chimanikire as its President, they instead decided to import Mutambara all the way from America!! This indeed demoralized and frustrating member of your faction right at the onset and led to many of them, like Chebundu and Chimanikire, defecting back to the mainstream party.

Let me remind the breakaway faction that their actions are covertly or overtly responsible for this outcome because they entered the elections, with the full knowledge that it was a race they could not win. They were motivated by selfish interest, unless they were sponsored by ZANU PF to split the opposition vote. If they ever cherished any interest in leading the country as an opposition party, why did they not field a presidential candidate and candidates in all parliamentary seats? Assuming that your faction had won even all the parliamentary seats, how were you going to form a government without a presidential candidate!!! You were banking on Makoni, who again made a last minute decision to contest the elections after he had been barred from contesting as an MP on a Zanu PF ticket? Lets be realistic you never had it right and should have seen it coming. Zimbabweans need real change, change that they can trust and will not rally behind people who are obviously motivated by the need for self preservation and building power empires for themselves. When you realized that talks with Tsvangirai had failed, you should have realistically assessed your situation and support base, based on the outcome of the senatorial elections that you had participated in, to see if its worth it to participate and endanger the nation by a possibility of splitting the votes. I would have thought that it was at this crucial point that you should have acted the way that the likes of Chimanike and Chebundo did, to admit that there had been an error in your political analysis and rejoin the party but instead you went all the way and risked all without a clear path you would follow after the elections.

The notion that the nation has lost a lot of good MPs is hard to confirm or deny at this point butbased on quality of the decisions these individuals have made in the political areana that lead to the formation of the Mutambara faction leaves lots to be desired on their ability to make sound judgments. I also believe and strongly so that those who have been elected under the Tsvangirai-led MDC ticket are equally able to articulate the same issues in parliament as would have been the cause had it been either Gibson Sibanda, Welshman Ncube, Paul Temba Nyathi, and Trudy Stevenson. I have faith that they will be able to competently deliver the mandate that they have been given by the people.

Hon Coltart, you now seek to endorse Tsvangirai for President, when you effectively endorsed Makoni. Why now? If your group had any political insight, you should have supported him from the onset and then you could have increased your leverage for bargaining for a unified MDC. You actions of supporting Makoni have made it difficult for anyone to take you serious at this stage. Only after realizing that Tsvangirai is now tipped for Presidency and not Makoni do you now want to be seen to be politically right. All the same, although it came a bit too late, it is still an endorsement especially ahead of the crucial re-run of the presidential elections. I would urge you and your group to sober up and offer unconditional support to the Opposition leader ahead of the re-run without expecting any favours but do so in the national interest. You have your personal needs, its understood but this time let them not stand ahead of the national good.

*Machinda is a former student leader and now a political commentator

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