"Political dialogue is about national vision and not positions" says Chamisa - what vision from one with no common sense P Guramatunhu

Zimbabwe’s politicians are corrupt, incompetent and shallow and it is therefore not surprising that they are given to contradicting themselves. Here is one example of Chamisa tripping himself! 

“I was pressured just go talk to ED, but as a leader I say we will have dialogue, but not for positions. We can only have dialogue to share a vision for our country, where we can have a future in which there are no rigged elections,” said Nelson Chamisa.

There is no one out there with even a half-working brain who still believe that MDC care about free, fair and credible elections. The party has occupied political centre stage for the last 20 years, had many golden opportunities to implement the reforms, and yet has nothing to show for it! Nothing! 

SADC leaders pressured Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement agreeing to the need to implement a raft of democratic reforms designed to stop a repeat of the blatant cheating and wanton violence by Zanu PF witnessed in the 2008 elections. 

The task of implementing the reforms was given to Morgan Tsvangirai, MDC Leader before Chamisa, and his fellow party leaders, including Chamisa. 

Mugabe bribed the MDC leaders with ministerial limos, generous salaries, a US$4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc. With their snouts in the feeding trough, not even the constant nagging by SADC leaders would get the MDC leaders to implement the reforms. 

Chamisa insisted in participating in last year’s elections with no reforms in place and not even a verified voters’ roll. “MDC has stringent measures to stop Zanu PF rigging elections,” he claimed.

Zanu PF went on to blatantly rig the elections, as we all know. Chamisa and his MDC friends contested the flawed elections out of greed, as David Coltart, MDC Treasurer General, readily admitted. 

“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the (2013) elections,” confessed Coltart in his book.

“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”

The political dialogue MDC has been calling for will lead to a power sharing arrangement, National Transition Authority (NTA), in which Chamisa and a few other MDC leaders expect a ministerial position. 

The NTA will be a watered down version of the 2008 GNU in which Zanu PF will retain its 2/3 parliamentary majority, for example. The 2008 GNU failed to get even one reform implemented; it is naive to expect the NTA to do any better. 

So the NTA will do nothing to advance the nation’s fight for free, fair and credible elections; if anything it will undermine the fight by creating the false hope that NTA will implement the reforms. The only reason Chamisa is hell bend in having the dialogue and the NTA is that it will secure for himself and other MDC leaders the coveted gravy train seats.  

So Chamisa’s statement is an oxymoronic nonsense in that he is claiming to have a vision when he does not even have common sense and that the dialogue is not about political power when it is about nothing else! 

Indeed, Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess because the Zimbabwe electorate has proven to be breathtakingly naive and gullible and thus failed to hold the political leaders, from both sides of the divide, to account. A healthy and functional democracy demands an informed and diligent electorate; we need to sit up and pay attention if we are ever going to get out of this mess.