Coalition is a red-herring still PDP will not quit - a madness in the madness. By Nomusa Garikai

It is all very well for WC Field to say, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.” When you are a Zimbabwe opposition politician with no other useful ideas other than the dumb one then try, try again and again and again and make a damn fool of yourself again and again and again.

How many Zimbabwe opposition leaders have proposed that, to unseat President Mugabe and his Zanu PF party, the country’s opposition political parties should form a grand coalition? Forming a coalition has  become the holy grail of opposition politics; if achieved, the panacea for electoral victory and if  not, the ready-made excuse for electoral defeat. Hardly a month will go by without one or two opposition leaders talking about an opposition coalition; Jacob Mafume, the spokesman of Tendai Biti’ PDP, is the latest to talk up the opposition coalition.

“We are talking to all the political parties informally. What we are grappling with now is the creation of a formal negotiating platform that will be announced publicly through the agreed channels, but there are informal talks, there are movements towards an agreement and no party is excluded,” Mafume announced.

Zimbabwe’s opposition parties are notoriously freckle; the parties are known for breaking and splintering into different parties at the drop of a hat. Having broken away they then spend a lot of time and treasure attacking each other with the savagery they have never showed attacking Mugabe. After knocking the political wind out of each other, they then engage in these endless coalition talks!

The coalition talks are just a waste of time and treasure because the reason why they split up was not over ideology but because each wanted to be the top-dog and will not accept a subservient role. They could form a coalition to achieve a set objective(s) but since the only objective they really care about is who holding what position; their unity talks get nowhere because they are ultimately about who is the top-dog.

The irony is; even if the opposition leaders could be forced to put aside their individual ambitions to be the top-dog and get all the opposition parties to form a grand coalition and unit behind one opposition presidential candidate, one opposition parliamentary candidate, etc.; the opposition electoral victory will still not be assured! Tsvangirai and his MDC party did not lose the July 2013 elections because the opposition vote was fragmented; he lost because President Mugabe blatantly rigged the vote.

For example, President Mugabe paid NIKUV, an Israeli company, to tempter with the voters roll so that nearly one million voters’ details were not in the constituency they expected and so did not vote. It should be noted that President Mugabe’s winning margin was just over one million.

Zanu PF controls the whole electoral process and the party has failed to release the voters roll, the smoking gun of the vote rigging, although this is a legal requirement.

In the 2008 elections President Mugabe used wanton violence to intimidate, harass, beat, rape and even murder innocent people to force the people to vote for him.

With such a well-established and funded vote rigging machinery there is no doubt that Mugabe and Zanu PF are unbeatable! Tsvangirai and his MDC friends were warned not to take part in the July 2013 elections without implemented the democratic reforms necessary to stop President Mugabe rigging the elections but they would not listen.

So even an outsider would be baffled with opposition leaders’ obsession with forming a coalition and yet have still done nothing now two years since the rigged July 2013 to implement the reforms necessary to stop vote rigging and violence.

“Do not be puzzled my friend,” one would explain. “The opposition cannot deliver free, fair and credible elections and they are therefore making complete fools of themselves, according to CW Fields, taking part in elections knowing will be rigged. Mr Mafume and his fellow opposition leaders are wasting time and treasure pursuing this grand coalition, a red-herring, to hide the fact that they doing nothing to implement the reforms.”

“In other words Mafume is doing something foolish to hide his foolishness; there is madness in his madness!”