Too many cooks spoil the broth.
MDC has certainly suffered the ill effects of having too many learned lawyers.
One says one this the second says that and the third says something else that
is neither this nor that and meanwhile the party has blundered from pillar to
post as it is pulled in all direction in the ensuing confusion.
“I have just finished reading
High Court judgement against the #MDC,” twittered MDC A Senator and lawyer
David Coltart. “I am profoundly shocked by the reasoning of the learned Judge.
The judgement is seriously flawed in numerous respects. The application should
have been dismissed on several different grounds but wasn’t.”
The judgement is seriously
flawed in numerous respects and yet you failed to name even one!
The application should have
been dismissed on several different grounds and again he failed to name one
such ground.
”For the avoidance of doubt
the leader of the Democratic Movement is Advocate Chamisa. This a de facto and
de jure fact .Two point six million Zimbabweans agreed with that position on 30
July 2018. A court of law can never be an electoral college,” commented Tendai
Biti, an MDC A MP and lawyer.
“Of all
forms of pervasion judicial Capture is most corrosive. The judiciary is at the
center of upholding the rule of law, enforcing justice to avoid self redress.
Where the judiciary puts itself in a position of ridicule, issues orders that
are brutum fulmen, it undermines itself.”
The case was
about the legality or otherwise of appointment of Nelson Chamisa and Elias
Mudziri as MDC VPs and the ascension of the former to acting president
following Morgan Tsvangirai’s death.
"The
appointments of the second and third respondents (Chamisa and Mudzuri) as
deputy presidents of the MDC party were unconstitutional and, therefore, null
and void. The appointment of second respondent (Chamisa) as acting president,
and president of the MDC party were unconstitutional and, therefore, null and
void,” said High Court Justice Edith Mushore.
Judge
Mushore could not have been more explicit what she was talking about and had
nothing to do with the national elections that followed months later!
Anyone
remotely familiar with Zimbabwe’s judiciary would agree are judiciary is not
independent. One example “judiciary capture” was Justice George Chiweshe’s
ruling that the 15 November 2017 military coup was “legal, justified and
constitutional” to clear the way for swearing in of Emmerson Mnangagwa as new
president.
To insinuate
that the this case is another example of judiciary bias is laughable because
Chamisa did NOT follow MDC’s own constitution in his hurry to seize power.
People like
Tendai Biti and David Coltart should stop crying foul just because they do not
like a court decision regardless of the facts. Chamisa was crowned president of
MDC and the other to VPs, Mudziri and Khupe, were never given a chance to
contest in a free, fair and credible elections.
If MDC
cannot be trusted to hold free, fair and credible elections in house what more
with outsiders.
Millions of Zimbabweans
have suffered all manner of harassment, beating and rape and tens of thousands have
lost their very lives in our fight for freedom and human rights including the
right to free, fair and credible elections. Their suffering and the lost lives would
all for nothing if all we do is remove corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and
murderous Zanu PF thugs and replace them with equally corrupt, incompetent and
vote rigging MDC thugs.
Writing on his Twitter portal, on Europe Day, Olkkonen said, “Violence and human rights violations in January resulted in the loss of lives and suffering, tarnished Zimbabwe’s image abroad and were a setback in EU-Zimbabwe relations. I hope we don’t see these events repeated!”
ReplyDeleteThis presents a real dilemma for Mnangagwa if he does not use brute force he knows the public protest will get out of hand because there are a lot of very angry people out there hungry for real change. If he uses brute force there is no doubt his isolation and criticism of his regime will only get worse!
Change is certainly coming what we want is orderly change, not violent change.
SA has so far managed to hold free, fair and credible elections long may this continue to be so!
ReplyDeleteIn Zimbabwe, we started on the wrong foot. Zanu PF used the threat of the civil war continuing to force the people to vote for the party. The party has cheated and used violence to stay in power ever since!
There is no doubt that Zimbabwe is in a serious, serious political and economic mess. Unemployment has soared to dizzying heights of 90% and ¾ of our people are now living in abject poverty and many are dying for want of food, clean drinking water, medicine, etc. This has all happened because for the last 39 years the nation has been stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical regime that has rigged elections to stay in power.
ReplyDeleteThe country has had many golden opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship but has wasted them all because the men and women entrusted to implement the democratic reforms have turned out to be corrupt and incompetent. The country had yet another rigged elections last year and instead of the nation standing up as one and demand that Mnangagwa and his junta step down it is none other than the corrupt and incompetent opposition who have jumped the gun and declared the illegitimate Zanu PF regime legitimate.
It took 20 years or so for many Zimbabweans to finally accept that Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs were corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous thugs. The people then risked life and limb to elect Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends on the ticket they will bring about the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections. They sold-out and have failed to implement even one reform.
MDC have settled into this cosy political arrangement in which Zanu PF will retain the dictatorial powers including the carte blanche powers to rig elections as long as the regime gives away to the opposition a few gravy train seats. This Judge Mushore ruling declaring Chamisa’s seizure of power last year as unconstitutional will create confusion and MDC leaders will now take their eyes off the ball of the worsening economic situation and the fact that we have an illegitimate regime to remove from office before 2023!
Not only has MDC proven corrupt and incompetent to be trusted to implement the democratic reforms but worse still they are now helping to prop up Zanu PF. Having accepted MDC as the champion fighting for democratic change, many people are clearly finding it very difficult to accept MDC are now a hindrance to democracy just as happened with Zanu PF. It has taken over 20 years already of MDC blundering from pillar to post and the nation is now on the very edge of the precipice, the people must open their eyes to this reality now or it will be too late!
@ Simbi
ReplyDelete"You can't con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on..."
Donald J. Trump,
My Advice to Chamisa has always been use political capital when you have it at the highest. Spending too much time in one position will expose some flaws. Just obverse and analyse the type of question you now being asked thus the same old answers we were rigged hee legitimacy no longer hold. People are now looking for goods (solutions).”
Well President Trump was right that one can’t con people forever but he was wrong that they will eventually catch on; not so in a dictatorship where those in power are not accountable to the people. Here in Zimbabwe the people have been stuck with the Zanu PF dictatorship for 39 years and counting.
If the truth be told the people have failed to hold MDC leaders to account too. MDC leaders sold-out during the GNU by failing to get even one reform implemented but, thanks to the party’s naïve and gullible followers, the leaders have got away with it.
People will catch on but only those with a working brain and thus capable of listening to reason and can think for themselves. Zimbabwe is in this mess because the people have been denied a meaningful say in the governance of the country but also because they are a naïve and gullible lot. Even if Zimbabwe was to get rid of the Zanu PF thugs it is clear the nation will only replace them with yet another bunch of corrupt and incompetent thugs.
Only a first class idiot would deny there was nothing democratic about the way Chamisa seized power following Tsvangirai’s death! Only a first class idiot would deny that MDC sold-out during the 2008 GNU by failing to implement even one democratic reform. Only a first class village idiot would deny MDC is a party of thugs who are corrupt and incompetent.
Dr Thokozani Khupe has just confirmed that she reclaiming the leadership of the MDC as per Justice Mushore’s judgement. She is now inviting Chamisa to discuss how the judgement can best be implemented. Like it or not the fight is on and Chamisa and his MDC A will now be spending all their time, energy and resources fight Mai Khupe. Whatever little time MDC A, as the country’s main opposition party with seating MPs and Senators, had spent on the burning national issues such as the worsening economic meltdown and the fact that we must remove this illegitimate Zanu PF regime BEFORE 2023 will now be cut to zero.
ReplyDeleteWhat is annoying here is that country is now looking down over the edge of the precipice and we should be spending all time, energy and treasure in ending the Zanu PF dictatorship before it is too late. This opposition cat fight is a distraction that we cannot afford.
Worse still this is a distraction of Chamisa’s own making; no one with any common sense can ever deny that Chamisa used dirty and undemocratic tactics to seize power last year following Tsvangirai’s death. The chickens are coming home to roost the tragedy is that the nation is being dragged into the mess!
No one with half a brain can ever pretend that what Chamisa did in seizing power last year was a democratic process. Chamisa was taken to task on this by BBC HardTalk presenter Stephen Sackur.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble with some of our people is their inability to look at facts and deal with them in a rational way. MDC national executive members should stopped Chamisa before he implemented his palace coup; they did not. Party members should have screamed the coup plotters down, they did not. This is a mess of MDC leaders and members alike so own making.
Chamisa and his MDC A have been blundering from pillar to post already before this mess of the leadership came up. Ever since last year's rigged elections MDC A has failed to show the nation how it was going to get the nation out of the mess we are stuck in. Chamisa was foolish to accept the rigged elections and was now fighting for a seat of the gravy train for himself. The fight with Khupe will only mean he and his MDC A are taking their eyes off the nation agenda of removing this illegitimate Zanu PF regime.
The people of Zimbabwe must now accept that Chamisa and his MDC friends are no longer fighting in the people's corner but in Zanu PF's corner. The greatest beneficiary of the Chamisa vs Khupe fight is Zanu PF and the greatest losers are us ordinary Zimbabweans. We must now engage Zanu PF in our own fight and ignore Chamisa and Khupe, they are a decoy.
Police shoot vendors in Harare.
ReplyDeleteThe economic meltdown is the one problem Zanu PF would want to wish away but cannot. The party knows that as long as the economic meltdown continues to get worse there will be street protests because human beings are not sheep would will suffer and go to the death and never protest regardless of the ever increasing state brutality.
When the choice is either to stay home and starve or to go on the street and try to earn a living as a vendor it is clear what many will choose. There will be vendors on the street, shooting or no shooting! It is totally unacceptable that the people should ever be forced into such a hard corner worse still by an illegitimate regime with no democratic mandate to govern.
ANC may have lost its share of the vote but the one thing it has not done is to try and boost it by rigging the elections. Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs rigged the nation's first post independence elections and has rigged all the elections that have followed.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the root cause of Zimbabwe's economic meltdown and political paralysis is the nation's failure to exorcise the demons of rigged elections. MDC leaders had the golden opportunities to implement the reforms during the 2008 GNU but failed to get even one reform implemented. Mugabe bribed Tsvangirai and company with the trappings of high office and the rest is history.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has failed to impress, he is not corrupt but that is all one can say about him. What SA is crying for is a competent leader and Ramaphosa does not even have common sense. It should come as no surprise if ANC was to lose the next elections. The party has ruled for a long time and has lost direction and a few years on the opposition bench will give it time to regroup.
No single party has the divine right to govern, that is as it should be in a healthy and functioning democracy.
@ ax Maposa
ReplyDelete“The quality and calibre of the lawyers is questionable. It's on paper only; they don't know the law. Just look at cases they lost through failing to observe simple steps required in law. Even a layman can teach them one or two things. That alone could the reason why they failed to dislodge Robert Mugabe for nearly 40years. You are giving the so called lawyers too much credit; they are simply bogus lawyers.”
I agree with you 100% the quality and calibre of our lawyers, just as with many other professionals, is disappointing. Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess because our MDC leaders sold-out and the country’s professional community did not even raise a finger to hold the sell-outs to account. If those with high academic qualifications failed to see the seriousness of the MDC leaders selling out on reform one can hardly expect my aunt in the rural backwaters to do any better.
Whilst the nation has to fight hard to get Mnangagwa and Zanu PF to step down so we can finally implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections; we will have to do so against the wishes of the likes of Tendai Biti and David Coltart. The two are some of the lucky few to win the few gravy train seats Zanu PF gave away; they will not want to lose their seats.
We not only have some of the poorest quality lawyers and politicians but in Biti and Coltart, we have sell-outs of the worst kind. The two know we need to implement the reforms to get out of the hell-on-earth we are stuck in, they are only pretending not to know because they have seats on the gravy train and that is all they care about!
The Obert Masaraure led Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (Artuz) and the Takavafira Zhou led Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe gave notice to the government that they wish to down chalks in 14 days if the government fails to open fresh wage talks.
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe’s economic meltdown is real and it is getting worse. Since the start of the year, the RTGS$ has is one worth 1/5 of its value as the exchange rate to the green buck has dropped from 1:1 to 5:1. Even if one wants to go to work he/she cannot do so if their monthly wage is not enough to cover their transport cost let alone everything else!
Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs. As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state there will be no meaningful economic recovery; that is a fact.
Let me say it for the umpteenth time the vote rigging and thus illegitimate Zanu PF regime must step down to create the political space for the appointment of an interim administration that will be tasked to implement the democratic reforms and holding of free, fair and credible elections. The idea that Zanu PF can remain in power and be trusted to implement the reforms is barmy; as barmy as the expectation that teachers will continue to turn up for work every day even if their wages do not cover their transport cost!
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is serious, the people are facing heart-breaking hardship and many are now dying for want of food, US$5 per month medicine, etc. The situation cannot continue like this for much longer. Zanu PF must step down now peacefully or the regime will be forced to step down through violent street protests or worse!