JORAM NYATHI: Again, why should I vote for you?

22 Mar, 2015 - 00:03 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

To tell me Zanu-PF has failed to turn around the economy doesn’t in itself tell me that you have a strategy to do better if you can’t articulate it.

After reading several articles in newspapers and social media comments on the cost of MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to recall 21 MPs who left the party to be part of the United Movement for Democratic Change (UMDC), I was left confronted with a one big question: Why should anyone vote for MDC-T?

The best answer came from a cynical acquaintance who has become bitterly disenchanted with both the MDC-T party and its leader after what seemed like some enduring romance over the years.

Her attitude now is: anything but Zanu-PF. She will vote for anything except Zanu-PF. That “anything” doesn’t have to be MDC-T or Tsvangirai.

My question was not a product of cynicism. I don’t believe in a one-party state. Multi-partysm often does help to keep the ruling party in check. The fear of losing power in elections is an incentive enough for any government to do better.

But then for a political party to become a serious contender for power it must have distinguishable policies; it must have something to sell to the electorate. It must go beyond the protest vote and lay out programmes of action to challenge those of the incumbent.

I failed to glean any of this in my reading of the many articles and comments to convince me that at this juncture the MDC-T makes a valuable counterbalance to Zanu-PF policies.

It is possible that one could be too critical or too demanding of a party which is not in power. But that’s the more reason why its promises should be clearer.

Without even going very far, Tsvangirai’s leadership raises a lot of questions. The party has been thrown into turmoil over the decision to recall the 21 MPs who broke away with Tendai Biti.

Tsvangirai’s party resolved at its congress last year that it would not contest future national elections until certain “outstanding” electoral reforms were made, presumably by Zanu-PF.

Fair enough, it’s their democratic right. Without recalling these MPs, that is, getting them out of Parliament, they still represented a reasonable opposition voice. It was not as if they were going to cross over and join Zanu-PF.

So why get people out of Parliament if you are not ready to replace them?

But that is more of posturing now by Tsvangirai because everybody with some political sense knows his MDC will contest all the urban constituencies, bar resource constraints.

To vote or not to vote? That is the question which split the original MDC in October 2005.

Don’t tell me about pragmatism. It’s more of opportunism than anything else. Which is Tsvangirai’s major weakness as a leader, lack of principle. Most of us have lost count of how many elections he has boycotted in principle and contested in practice only to complain about rigging in constituencies where his party lost.

There have been no electoral reform. There are not likely to be any electoral reforms in the near future. This is in part because the MDC-T itself has failed to articulate those reforms.

But we have no doubt that the MDC-T will be out in full force to try and win back the seats lost as a result of the thoughtless recall of MPs, otherwise Tsvangirai risks being left alone.

In any event, Tsvangirai remains in power on sufferance, because there is no obvious alternative. That is what most of his ardent erstwhile supporters now say in whispers.

The MDC loses elections because it can’t answer a practical question: why should I vote for you?

And its supporters don’t appear any better in articulating the policies of their party. This is mainly because there are no such policies. This why: telling me that Zanu-PF has failed to create 2,2 million jobs is not a policy.

You are telling me about Zanu-PF failures instead of what you want to do.

To tell me that Zanu-PF’s land reform destroyed agriculture does not answer the question “what would you have done better given the centrality of the land to the liberation struggle?”

To tell me Zanu-PF has failed to turn around the economy doesn’t in itself tell me that you have a strategy to do better if you can’t articulate it.

There is just too much focus by the MDC-T on the purported miraculous effects of foreign direct investment. But its efficacy depends on government policy. Evidence abounds of African countries which have opened their economies to capitalist predators but are doing no better.

We had the bitter experience of Esap.

Many companies collapsed, those which survived were so badly hurt they have not recovered from that catastrophe although it’s politically-correct now to blame their parlous state on the land reform and hyperinflation. We need “guided” FDI if Zimbabwe is to buck the trend in Africa.

We have the resources but have never benefited from their exploitation by foreigners all of whom refuse to add value or beneficiate locally, thus denying us desperately needed employment opportunities.

Secondly, claims that FDI will cure the liquidity crunch are just an illusion. That can never happen so long as Zimbabweans don’t save, spend their earnings importing non-productive trinkets like private cars and expensive cellphone handsets and human hair.

Until Zimbabweans have a change of culture and consume local, industrial recovery shall remain a distant dream.

The tragedy is that political polarisation makes people think it’s a Zanu-PF problem to solve. The more foreign we consume, the faster we are killing our own economy and denying the productive sector sources of money.

We are denying our own children a better future at home in the name of fighting Zanu-PF. That’s more like Tsvangirai recalling MPs from Parliament to spite Biti. We are cutting our nose to spite our face.

It is myopic to think that consuming local is a Zanu-PF ploy. It is in fact practical economics. Production must come before quality. That is how all prosperous economies have done it, especially China which has overtaken Japan to become the second biggest economy.

Reading the desperation in “anything but Zanu-PF” gave me nightmarish prospects of change for its own sake.

Libyans tried it under pressure from foreign interests. Muammar Gaddafi was a dictator, they were told. They needed change.

Since 2011 Libya has changed leaders seven times. More than 10 000 people have died in search of lost peace, including a US ambassador. They called for change without any clear policy and are now reaping blood.

Libya has become the hotbed of terrorist gangs and those who instigated Gaddafi’s removal have retreated to Paris, London and Washington, leaving Libyans to stew in this new brand of democracy.

The blood-curdling killings in Tunisia last week don’t paint the picture of a successful “Arab Spring”. Nor is Egypt faring any better.

What’s my point? No one needs change for its own sake.

Zimbabwe deserves a better opposition, one that offers policy alternatives. Zimbabweans deserve better MPs who can articulate serious national issues, not job seekers driven by foreign interests.

The pettiness of parliamentary debate often makes one wince in embarrassment because there are very few serious policy issues raised and alternatives proposed.

The MDCs have failed to reinvent beyond offering street protests as a “policy” alternative.

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