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Dumiso Dabengwa

Nqobile Tshili Bulawayo Bureau—
Prospects of a coalition of opposition parties that was being touted as a tonic to unseat Zanu-PF in next year’s elections are fading amid revelations by ZAPU president Dr Dumiso Dabengwa yesterday that MDC-T was negotiating in bad faith.Addressing a media briefing here, Dr Dabengwa said MDC-T had made it clear that it would retain its leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and party name if the coalition deal is reached.

“There are certain areas that they say are not negotiable, for instance the name of the coalition will not be negotiated,” he said. “It will be MDC-T. And the other hint we received is that the leader of the coalition is also not negotiable because the leader is already there. So, we don’t know what is going to happen at the end.”

Dr Dabengwa said some political parties including his, were in the dark over Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) being signed by Mr Tsvangirai and other opposition leaders who included Dr Joice Mujuru, Mr Tendai Biti and Professor Welshman Ncube.

“We still don’t understand the purposes of these MOUs,” he said. “It’s an issue we hope to get an explanation on during our next CODE (Coalition for Democrats) meeting. But I think we also got the hint from MDC-T that it was not interested in the type of coalition that we had created and it was going to do it on bilateral basis.”

The MDC-T is not part of CODE. During the press briefing, Dr Dabengwa urged the Government to postpone next year’s elections, claiming that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was not yet ready to preside over the polls.

This is despite the fact that ZEC has previously presided over elections, with observers’ from groupings such as SADC and the African union (AU) expressing satisfaction with its work in the 2013 polls.

“Our recommendation as Zapu, therefore, is that the 2018 elections should be postponed until the voters roll is updated,” said Dr Dabengwa. “You cannot say you are ready to go into an election until you have a voters roll.”

Dr Dabengwa said ZEC should swiftly implement the Biometric Voter Registration system and asked Government to provide the requested funds.