EDITORIAL COMMENT: Opposition caught in time warp

SINCE President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced his first Cabinet last week, talk in the media and the opposition has been about its alleged lack of technocrats and inclusivity. President Mnangagwa was accused of sticking to “deadwood’ from the Mugabe era, with suggestions that we should not expect any improvement in performance.

Of course, we did caution that the President wouldn’t want to set himself up for failure given the short time he has between now and the harmonised elections next year. If anything were required to demonstrate that the new dispensation means business we need look no further than Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa’s Budget statement presented in the National Assembly on Thursday.

The policy pronouncements therein are hard to believe for the die-hard critic and a nightmare for the opposition. Minister Chinamasa announced huge cuts in benefits for civil servants, a reduction in diplomatic missions and an end to luxury travel for Government employees.

Local authorities would be compelled to stick to the 30-70 ratio in their allocation of resources to salaries versus service to residents, he said. Parastatals and other state-owned enterprises will have to justify their existence, meaning after thorough scrutiny, Government will decide which ones deserve support from Treasury, which ones can go commercial and which ones should be allowed to sink.

In short, executives of parastatals cannot continue to draw huge salaries when they are failing to meet set targets. What Minister Chinamasa managed to do with his Budget statement was to show the die-hard critic that crafting a budget or making substantive cuts to Government expenditure doesn’t require technocrats from outside.

The ministry has technocrats in its ranks. What is required is political will to take bold decisions, some of which may prove unpopular in the ruling party, like the axing of more than 3 700 party youths from their sinecures.

The double-edged sword also hit the political opposition on the chin. The Budget statement demonstrated that Zanu-PF doesn’t require a hand from the opposition to make drastic changes to how it runs its Government or the economy.

There were attempts by the opposition and NGOs to smuggle their people into Government through the back door in the name of inclusiveness, so they could claim credit for whatever positive developments may come.

They must feel disarmed and naked. If there is anything to be observed from the demands of the opposition, things such as media and law electoral reforms, demilitarisation of the civil service, a new voters’ roll or a new ZEC, it is that the opposition in Zimbabwe is itself long overdue for reform. Their demands are too old and too discordant in the new dispensation.

They belong to the past. That is why we now feel leaving them out of Government was nothing short of a masterstroke. They are parties of yesterday. While Zanu-PF is focused on alleviating people’s immediate challenges, the MDC-T and its cousins in the collapsed alliance or big tent have their eyes or brains firmly on next year’s elections, in other words solely on power.

Of course, they are sure to lose the elections, fair or foul, hence their preoccupation with manufacturing excuses for the coming doom. To them those elections have already been rigged.

Our view is therefore that their inclusion in Government would have been more disruptive than constructive because their objectives and those of Zanu-PF are tangential. Otherwise the opposition should be showing goodwill towards the new dispensation that people’s fortunes may change positively in the shortest possible period.

For Government, what is left now is to implement the bold decision made by Minister Chinamasa in his Budget statement. It doesn’t need outsiders to teach it how to govern.

For its part, the opposition can do Zimbabweans a favour by calling for the lifting of sanctions they invited upon the nation from their Western friends to punish Zimbabwe for restoring its legacy by taking its land back from former colonisers. That way, the people of Zimbabwe can speak with one voice as we forge ahead as a sovereign State.

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