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Alliance that never was

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THE MDC Nelson Chamisa-led alliance, with six other partners whose combined total support from the electorate is less than one percent, is proving a doomed marriage of convenience, if problems associated with candidate selection is anything to go by.
This is in line with earlier predictions.
Recent opinion polls have shown Chamisa’s support to be hovering around 20 percent, while his partners share much less than one percent, if we factor in Joice Mujuru and Thokozani Khupe.
And this is what they had baptised the ‘grand coalition.’
The main reason for the imminent collapse is the absence of any ideological conviction to glue the coalition together.
‘Unity’ based on the desire to get rid of ZANU PF and nothing else, is not enough to hold together any serious political outfit.
The disintegration of the original MDC is there for all to see.
Here was a political grouping of lawyers, trade unionists, students and white farmers, among other other unwieldily ambitious quislings hastily patched together by our former colonisers as a vehicle to dislodge ZANU PF. With the passing on of Morgan Tsvangirai and the impending elections, renegades Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube upped their enthusiasm for the ‘grand coalition’.
There was now a chance to reclaim their eminent positions in an organisation now led by one they considered to be their junior.
After all, they had both formed splinter MDCs only because they were not happy with the leadership of Tsvangirai.
But those who had stayed put in the MDC, including Chamisa seem to have been aware of the threat posed by the returning former party bigwigs.
The insignificance of the remnants they were bringing with them had been exposed by opinion polls.
So at the final selection of candidates to represent the MDC-Alliance both in council and parliament, minor parties of the ‘grand coalition’ were reduced to size.
The ‘unity’ agreement which had limited Chamisa’s party to 150 of 210 constituencies in the Assembly was literally torn to shreds.
MDC-Alliance partners then accused Chamisa of chicanery after he ‘dribbled’ them by unilaterally fielding his party’s candidates in constituencies reserved for his allies.
Professor Welshman Ncube is furious.
It is his party which was worst affected, especially in Matabeleland South where, Chamisa’s MDC officials refused to sign nomination papers belonging to genuine Professor Ncube’s candidates.
After what happened to Khupe, some in the alliance could be justified to believe Chamisa’s actions were influenced by an anti-Ndebele tribal bias.
Meanwhile, there is very little noise or non at all from Biti’s half of the alliance.
This is not surprising.
It looks like Biti and the rest of the other alliance leaders joined the so-called ‘grand coalition’ to resuscitate their political careers.
They are likely to be little worried by the handful of followers from their moribund political parties.
What is certain, however, is that there is now bad blood between the alliance partners which cannot be suppressed for too long.
In the likely event that Chamisa loses the July 30 elections, the MDC as an alliance is unlikely to last a day longer.
No doubt, Biti, Ncube, Jacob Ngarivhume and Agrippa Mutambara, key members of the alliance, must be hoping to secure key positions in the surviving MDC-Alliance party.
However, they might find Chamisa’s Vanguard not that welcoming.

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