FOR once US President Joseph Biden has come out, perhaps inadvertently, eulogising the sanctity of routinely holding democratic elections, as a means of preserving a country’s democracy.
May be , he must have forgotten that the US tends to change the meaning of the word ‘democracy’ when applied to Zimbabwe.
His assertion that rejecting election results was unpatriotic sounded very paradoxical in this part of our world. The CCC formerly MDC, which is heavily financed and backed by America has persistently rejected election results after heavy defeats. We will come back to this later.
And yet only recently President Biden warned Republicans that refusal to accept election results was ‘a path to chaos’. In an election one expects either to win or lose and the electorate’s verdict has to be respected.
“You can’t love your country only when you win,” the Democratic president declared ahead of impending bitterly contested US midterm elections. What must have been still fresh in Biden’s mind was defeated Republican president hopeful Donald Trump outright rejection of poll results without even an iota of evidence.
But all the same they claimed ballot fraud. They went on to invade the Capitol in order to stop Biden from winning the presidential contest.
There were casualties including an invader who was shot dead by riot police. And all this in the name of refusing to accept the people’s verdict.
No wonder Biden has unreservedly denounced as unpatriotic, the groundless and violent rejection of the people’s will.
Enter Nelson Chamisa and his CCC.
Just like Trump, Chamisa’s supporters sensing defeat even before the 2018 election results were announced, chose to invade the capital.
The chaos that followed resulted in loss of lives. This is exactly what Biden was talking about, when he denounced the rejection of election results .
But in Chamisa’s case the American establishment saw nothing wrong with his weird reaction to the democratic election results.
Not even the verdict of the Constitutional Court would persuade the Americans to knock sense into their puppet. This is because he was planted into the Zimbabwean political milieu to dislodge ZANU PF by hook or crook. Even when Biden came after Trump, like other previous American leaders, he did not waiver his support for their surrogate.
Come 2023, Zimbabwe true to its constitution, is going to hold harmonised elections as the prescribed five years, the life span of a government, comes to an end.
There is a time Chamisa formed what he called a political party. It was a party without a structure, constitution, ideology, membership and not even a defined leadership and dressed it in yellow.
Out of curiosity people came out to see what this amorphous formation was all about. Chamisa and his associates believed they had buried ZANU PF at last.
They had no other message apart from boasting the colour yellow and nothing about intimidation this time. This is a colour just like the green and yellow which are already among the colours associated with the ruling ZANU PF.
When the revolutionary party came out with its message of tangible development for the by-elections campaign the CCC realised ZANU PF was as strong if not even stronger than before.
What with the 7th National People’s Congress! Sensing poll defeat in 2023, they reverted to their traditional pre-poll rhetoric. They began to talk about abductions, violence, intimidation, infiltration and an incompetent ZEC.
All this is meant to pre-empty the 2023 poll results, insinuating that the election ground is not even and therefore results won’t be free and fair. But it is ZANU PF which is supposed to talk about uneven ground because of the illegal sanctions meant to give the Western surrogates an edge.
Yet the Western backed CCC is already assured of America’s backing, Biden included. To President Biden, we have to remind him well in advance that sauce for goose is sauce for gander.