THE profile of a dictator CCC leader Nelson Chamisa appears to be aspiring to put up; is likely to come back to haunt him, despite the apparent initial success.
CCC has many shortcomings, when compared with other political parties.
What makes it weird is that although it claims to be a political party, it has no ideology, constitution or structures.
Moreover, even as we go for the August 23 general elections, it has not yet had a congress as a new party.
The only known leadership position is that of president and that is Nelson Chamisa.
And this is not by accident.
Chamisa calls this ‘strategic ambiguity’ and says it is a means of avoiding infiltration by ZANU PF.
But as it is turning out, Chamisa is using this strategy to rid the so-called political party of transparency and accountability.
He likes it that way and true to the profile of a dictator, he is having things his way.
This leaves the CCC an amorphous and opaque party run almost single-handedly by Chamisa as a tuckshop or personal property.
He is assisted by Fadzayi Mahere and Gift Ostallos Siziba, apparently the party’s spokespersons handpicked by Chamisa.
This set up has given the ambitious autocrat a leeway to strengthen his grip on the structureless party.
And he has wasted no time in weeding out those he feels are a threat to his leadership – the old guard in particular.
The impending harmonised general elections have presented him with a glorious opportunity to effect his ‘strategic ambiguity’ plan.
Normally, as a new party, a congress would have been held for delegates to select the presidential candidate.
Chamisa wouldn’t risk the distinct possibility of losing through this democratic process.
But true to a dictator’s cunning manoeuvres, he somehow declared himself the CCC presidential candidate.
Tendai Biti and company huffed and puffed but to no avail.
For the council and parliamentary candidates, he abandoned selection through the democratic secret ballot primary elections.
He chose, instead, a process that would give him a chance to handpick his own choices.
This was through an outdated selection process that saw party supporters queue behind a candidate of their choice,‘bereka mwana’, to determine the winner.
This saw his main rival, Biti, of the Maruva cabal, being humiliated by ‘munhu asina mabvi’, Allan ‘Rusty’ Markham, under very suspicious circumstances.
Biti was not the only victim of Chamisa’s Machiavellian instinct which has become part of his DNA.
Even candidates who had won their ‘election’ mysteriously disappeared from Chamisa’s nomination list.
To Chamisa, the means he used, no matter how crude, had justified the clipping off of his perceived challengers’ feathers and that’s the end he desired.
But the monster Chamisa created has not taken long to boomerang right into his face.
Double and even triple CCC nomination candidates in wards and constituencies has turned out to be a problem for the ‘impregnable’ outfit.
There is neither a constitution nor institutional guidance for this one-man band political party.
There are no structures or registers to help identify non-CCC members who might have infiltrated.
Thus the only person who is answerable is Chamisa, who had the final list on nomination day, of those who are said to have qualified.
And the usual scapegoat, ZANU PF, is already in the field without even a single nomination headache.
But this is only the beginning — worse is to be expected after the beleaguered party without a constitution, an ideology or structures loses the August 23 harmonised elections, as expected.
