Nomusa Garikayi| “The president (Tsvangirai) said one swallow does not make a summer and Bikita West is the swallow. It was a farcical election that cannot be used to measure someone’s popularity,” Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, Luke Tamborinyoka recently said.
“Yes, there are some people who want to use it to undermine the coalition. However, we will not allow that because we have already decided to do a cow-horn formation on Zanu-PF.”
The Bikita West by-elections confirmed what most people have been saying about Mai Mujuru and her Zim PF, that the she and her party are all bluff and no substance. Zim PF boosted that they will stop Zanu PF rigging elections because they know how the regime rigged elections. The Bikita West by-elections results showed ZimPF’s presence had no effect!
The Bikita West by-election results confirms nothing has changed, it is the first swallow but of many to follow. We do not need to go through yet another election process in 2018 to know the result is yet another rigged election; the Bikita West by-election was the warning of what is certain to come!
We need to implement the democratic reforms now before holding the next elections if we are going to stop Zanu PF rigging the next elections. Tsvangirai and his friends have their heads buried in the sand, they will only believe Zanu PF can rig elections AFTER the elections are rigged.
Zimbabwe is in a serious economic and political mess, millions of our people now live in abject poverty and life expectancy has plummeted from 68 years when Zanu PF first came into power in 1980 to 34 years in 2004, the last time it was measure. Life expectancy has grown in most of the other countries in the region in the same period and countries like Angola and Mozambique had as much as 5 to 10 years better life expectancy than us.
Zimbabwe cannot afford another five years of Zanu PF corrupt and tyrannical rule and push the nation even deeper into poverty and hopelessness. MDC will once again admit, after the 2018 elections have been rigged, that Zanu PF stole the elections and the party’s “cow-horn formation against Zanu PF was useless. No doubt, they will renew their promise not to contest any elections until reforms are implemented, just as they did after the rigged 2013 elections. But what comfort will all the admission be to the millions unemployed to whom poverty now spells death who will have to endure another five years of this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship!
The coalition between MDC and ZImPF is not the panacea to stop Zanu PF rigging the 2018 elections, implementing the reform is that cure. Taking part in the next elections with not even one reform in place is madness and we have seen this madness in 2013 and on many other occasions in the past.
It was the greatest physicist and intellectual, Albert Einstein who said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Zanu PF will rig the 2018 elections with or with the grand MDC-ZimPF coalition as long as there are no democratic reforms in place. After 37 years of rigged elections we KNOW Zanu PF has mastered the art vote rigging to perfection. We do not need to go through another meaningless election process to know that!