The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Reporter
EMBATTLED MDC Alliance leader, Mr Nelson Chamisa has been urged to put his house in order and avoid misleading the nation by his misguided statements that no elections will be held in the country without his party.
Mr Chamisa, who is involved in a turf war with MDC-T interim leader, Dr Thokozani Khupe recently insinuated that no elections would be held in the country without his party in the light of by elections set to be held in December.
In a letter to Mr Chamisa, another opposition party, the Zimbabwe People’s Party, through their director of communications and publicity, Mr Jaison Midzi took a swipe at Mr Chamisa noting that a critical national programme will not be forced to stop because of the problems within the MDC Alliance camp.
Mr Midzi said Mr Chamisa’s announcement was unfortunate as it could affect voter turn out with people approaching the the up-coming by-elections in fear.
“The ZPP would like to inform you (Mr Chamisa) to focus on your party issues than to use your platform to spread wrong information to the nation. It is not good for us political parties to tamper with people’s right to vote and also any other rights as enshrined in our national constitution.
“Let’s revolutionise our politics so that it becomes deliverable politics. Descriptive politics will not bring tangibles to our nation.
“The ZPP will be going ahead with the elections. All leaders will do our nation proud and good if they can be able to distinguish between issues of personal/party interest and issues of national interest,” said Mr Midzi.
He further encouraged Mr Chamisa to avoid being volatile when things were not going well within his political party.
“We also hope and wish that the squabbles in your political formation will be resolved amicably by all of you in the MDC formations.
“Leaders emerge from a crisis and this is the time your leadership skills are being tested. This is your opportunity to show leadership and emerge as a leader. Leadership will involve withdrawing such utterances like the one you made regarding the elections that were called by ZEC. Political parties have no mandate to call for elections or to call off elections,” said Mr Midzi.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) recently revealed that there were 23 local authority vacant seats and 16 in Parliament.
ZEC also lifted the suspension of electoral activities paving the way for holding of by-elections.
