Split MDC to participate in March elections

By Tererai Karimakwenda
04 February, 2008

After several urgent meetings aimed at re-uniting the two formations of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), leaders from the opposition announced Sunday that they will be presenting separate candidates to compete against Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF in the harmonized elections set for March 29th. This means Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara will contest as separate presidential candidates and both parties will also field their own candidates for parliament. In separate press statements on Sunday the MDC formations confirmed that unity talks had collapsed due specifically to disagreements over the allocation of parliamentary seats. It appears that there was much disagreement on that issue, particularly when it involved seats in Matabeleland province.

Nelson Chamisa, spokesperson for the Tsvangirai MDC, said that party president Morgan Tsvangirai tried his best to push for a vote in favour of unification. But the problem was that the people, through the National Council, decided they did not want to share parliamentary seats equally with the other faction. The National Council has 140 representatives who say that they bring the opinions of party members from their constituencies to debates.

Chamisa explained that there was no problem with MPs who had seats already. They would have first preference then would be confirmed if there was a 2/3 vote in the National Council. But he said the Mutambara faction had no structures in some of the constituencies where they wanted seats. He added: “People absolutely and totally rejected it on the basis of what they called arrogance and unreasonableness on the part of our other colleagues in the Mutambara faction.”

The Mutambara MDC had already announced last week that they would be taking part in the polls. Party spokesperson Gabriel Chaibva said the government had met all the legal requirements and they would definitely be participating. At that time a decision had not yet been made by the Tsvangirai MDC on whether to participate or boycott the poll. This was the first clue that differences remained within the opposition.
Chamisa said the Tsvangirai National Council had a heated debate over participation this weekend and then voted overwhelmingly in favour. They decided that voting would give Zimbabweans a fighting chance. As for the argument that participation would legitimize Mugabe and the elections, Chamisa disagreed. He felt that taking part would expose the illegitimacy of the Mugabe regime.

We were not able to reach the Mutambara MDC for comment. But according to press reports MDC President Arthur Mutambara apologized to Zimbabweans for failing to unite the MDC factions. He is quoted as saying that it was disagreement over seat allocations that had killed the idea of unity and that the chances of defeating Mugabe in the March elections were now sharply reduced.