The Head of Zimbabwe’s parliamentary delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly and Co-President of the ACP-EU JPA Standing Committee on Political Affairs and Human Development, Cde Makhosini Hlongwani has blasted calls by MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai for President Robert Mugabe to step down.
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Full statement:
The article in the Daily News Thursday in which Mr Morgan Tsvangirai of one faction of the MDC is calling on the President, Cde Robert Mugabe to step down, on some slanderous allegations of legitimacy, a stagnated economy and apparently age, makes for some sad and disturbing reading.
- The call by Mr Morgan Tsvangirai for President Mugabe to step down is itself illegitimate and illegal, coming as it does from a party and individual that failed to get legitimacy through a legitimate popular suffrage that was endorsed by all progressive African and other Southern states, including the ACP, and the Non Aligned Movement countries, that are truly independent on July 2013. The call, which is nothing but a self fulfilling exercise in futility, and a relevance seeking stunt, does not represent any constituency, since the MDC only managed to garner a less than a third of the national vote in a legitimate electoral process
- Mr Tsvangirai must appreciate as I believe he does, the fact that for ZANU PF in general, and for President Robert Mugabe in particular, to get more than two thirds majority, at his(TSVANGIRAI) and his party’s expense in the last election, is a resounding legitimation for President Mugabe, which needs no rocket science to come to terms with.
- As for the President’s age, a perennially losing political project in the stock of the MDC, which received and has continued to receive, a thorough drubbing at the hands of the President and ZANU PF, having agreed in the first place to participate in the contest, should not be crying foul post facto after losing the election, and worse still two years after that election. The fact remains that the so called old President, is very popular in Zimbabwe to the extent of delivering a thumping more than two thirds majority to the MDC, and Lo and behold, even SADC has appreciated the fact and so has the African Union.
- As for the economy, it will be interesting to interrogate the record of the MDC itself in areas with the most economic activity in Zimbabwe, including Bulawayo, Gweru, Harare, Masvingo and Mutare among others where the MDC has held fort since 2000. For the record Tsvangirai’s party has presided over a dilapidating infrastructure in these cities, denying residents a fundamental basic human right of access to water for years in Harare’s suburbs and other cities, and turning these otherwise beautiful cites into dangerous places where driving is now a nightmare. Their record in these cities speaks for itself. Never mind what would happen if they were running the country.
- The call for the President to step down should therefore be dismissed with the contempt it deserves.ZTV
