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Morgan Tsvangirai

Sydney Kawadza Senior Reporter—
MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai has been pressured by the party’s Western backers to form a coalition with other opposition parties ahead of next year’s harmonised elections as a precondition for funding, it has emerged. This has forced Mr Tsvangirai, whose party headquarters was recently cleared of furniture over a debt, to defy party protocol and unilaterally form an alliance with little-known political parties like the Professor Welshman Ncube-led MDC, the Tendai Biti-led People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Transform Zimbabwe and Zanu-Ndoga led by Mr Denford Musiyarira under the banner of MDC-Alliance.

Also read:

• Tsvangirai forms coalition, bypasses MDC-T structures
• Tsvangirai under fire over MoUs
• Nkosana Moyo scoffs at coalition talks
• Coalition doomed to fail: Analysts
• MDC-T, NPP dread rural constituencies
• Mujuru, Tsvangirai pact: Wheels come off
• Ex-Tsvangirai aide sees 2018 coalition defeat
• Tsvangirai sets stringent coalition conditions
• No party is too small for coalition: Ncube

Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) and the Reverend Gerald Mubaiwa-led Zimbabwe Opposition Political Parties Council are reportedly also in the MDC-Alliance.
Impeccable sources yesterday said Mr Tsvangirai was so much under pressure to form the coalition that he has ditched talks with established parties.

“Western funders have set stringent conditions for possible bankrolling efforts to remove Zanu-PF from Government and the major condition is a coalition.
“This has put Tsvangirai under so much pressure that he has decided to ditch all the other parties holding to their position like Joice Mujuru’s National People’s Party.

“It also seems Tsvangirai is in such a hurry to form the coalition and grab the money hence his rush to go into bed with the little-known formations, some who had ditched him before,” a source said.

Tsvangirai recently shut the door on Dr Mujuru’s NPP with whom he signed a Memorandum of Understanding sometime ago and coalesced with small parties.

Yesterday MDC-T spokesperson Mr Obert Gutu dismissed the allegations saying the opposition party does not require Western funding.

“We get our funding through the Political Parties Finance Act and our members’ subscriptions. We are a party that is bankrolled by its membership,” he said.

Mr Gutu said the MDC-T was owed over $2 million by the Treasury.

“The Treasury has a constitutional mandate to release the money which is what they are not doing. We are owed a lot of money, more than $2 million. We are saying why are they holding on to our money?”

The MDC-T is broke and is failing to pay its workers.

The Sheriff last week attached the opposition party’s properties at Harvest House leaving it virtually empty.

This was after the MDC-T failed to settle a $108 000 it owes its former employee Ms Sally Dura.

Creditors are reportedly eyeing MDC-T properties as it is failing to service debts amounting to millions of dollars.

Among them are 28 former workers who have won their labour cases against MDC-T.

They are owed $1.1 million.

Meanwhile, Tanzanian-based political analyst, Mr Tafadzwa Mugwadzi said the MDC-T Alliance was a Western project bound to fail.

“It has been blatantly and glaringly clear that the so-called coalition is a Trojan horse of the serial and unrepentant Western regime change funders.

“As such, because the MDC-T structures have not been given a platform to register their choices, it leaves little doubt that the new arrangement is a boardroom consensus of a cornered and bankrupt rapacious clique of opposition gangsters, who lead political parties that are financially hamstrung,” he said.

Mr Mugwadi said the parties rushing to bed with Mr Tsvangirai were prepared to bend their vision for the “30 pieces of silver” from unsuspecting donors.

“The more a baboon climbs to the tree top, the more it exposes its behind. The agenda for this arrangement is the ‘green backs’.

“Theirs is a coalition that is hatched to please the West more than the Zimbabweans and is a shear waste of time because it is grounded in the cocktails of donor masters and less on the electorate.”