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MDC in-fighting will help Mugabe
Peta Thornycroft, Independent Online (IOL)
June 10, 2007

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=84&art_id=vn20070610091655862C150412

Zimbabwe's split Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been unable to unite its two factions in an election coalition. This will probably hand 2008's presidential and parliamentary polls to President Robert Mugabe on a platter.

Contrary to what is being put out by the leader of one MDC faction, Morgan Tsvangirai, negotiations for a co-operation agreement between his faction and that of Arthur Mutambara collapsed at the fourth attempt in South Africa in May.

The reason is that the two sides cannot decide how many election candidates each will put forward.

Unless founding party president Tsvangirai changes his mind, each faction will contest the poll as individual parties, splitting the opposition vote and ensuring Mugabe and Zanu-PF cruise to easy victories without having to cheat much or even beat up too many people.

Tsvangirai has publicly claimed, most recently in an interview on the news channel, CNBC last week, that the fight between the two factions was "water under the bridge." But that is not true, according to informed sources.

Tsvangirai's faction is determined that not only should he be the candidate for the presidential poll - which the Mutambara faction has readily agreed to - but that there should be a complicated, logistically and financially impossible round of national primary elections to choose candidates for the parliamentary polls.

Analysts in the Mutambara faction calculate it would take until the eve of the nomination court for the elections, expected next March, to select candidates according to Tsvangirai's formula.

Insiders say the process would intensify rivalry within the MDC.

"There will be jockeying and fighting until the moment we get to the nomination courts, and so there will be no campaigning for votes for the opposition in rural areas where we have little support," said one insider.

"It would allow anyone claiming to be an MDC member, who might also be working for the Central Intelligence Organisation, to participate in this complicated process they have designed. There is no time left for this. We have effectively only five months and we are full on into elections."

A strategic part of the problem is that Tsvangirai appears to have virtually no support in Zimbabwe's second city Bula-wayo and Mutambara has little support in Harare.

So each faction would have to give way if a coalition was to have a national character.

Both factions have almost equal numbers of MPs in parliament, while the Mutambara faction last year became the first opposition party to wrest control of a rural council district from Zanu-PF in a rural council constituency.

So the Mutambara faction proposed a more or less equal division of constituencies between the two factions.

Tsvangirai's secretary- general Tendai Biti agreed to that formula in April, but his decision was overturned by his national council when he returned home.

The MDC split after several years of tensions, which increased after a group of thugs, loyal to Tsvangirai, beat up MDC members they believed supported Welshman Ncube, who is an ally of Mutambara. - Tribune Foreign Service

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