Compelling case for early election

Analysis by Itai Dzamara

There shouldn’t be any more debate about the national situation – which is a serious crisis, urgently requiring a solution. 

Further, there shouldn’t be any debate about the fact that the Zanu PF regime of Robert Mugabe just won’t be able to solve the serious national crisis, making it inevitable that, yet again, there shall be intervention and involvement of other forces or stakeholders.

Let me start by outlining why and how Mugabe and his regime won’t be able to solve the crisis. Most importantly, the Zanu PF outfit has totally lost both the moral and political credibility to govern the country. The regime has had enough time to destroy not only its legitimacy, but also image both at home and on the global scene.

Rigging last year’s elections, very blatantly, became the last straw which eroded all trust and hope in Zanu PF being a party willing to discard its past and bad reputation as an agent of tyranny and subversion of democracy. The timing couldn’t have been worse for Zanu PF, which had spent four years in a coalition with the opposition that had brought very significant improvements to national governance and economic performance.

That Mugabe and his party, quite barbarically, had battled to frustrate and deliberately scuttle the coalition, now returns to haunt them, beyond redemption. To Zimbabweans and also broader global community, Mugabe and his party are regarded for the rogue, unrepentant and arrogant mafia outfit they have proved to be.

That unequivocally means there won’t be a revival of confidence in the Zanu PF regime. There won’t be an end to the massive rate of capital flight that has hit the country since just after last year’s rigged elections. Additionally, no sane country or organisation would risk investing or pumping resources into such a situation of uncertainty and danger.

Further to that, Zimbabwe’s competitiveness continues to decrease, because, there continues to be huge decline in production levels – industry and commerce remain on the course of negative growth because every sector is crippled by company closures.

As if by supernatural plan, Zanu PF no longer has the cash cow it previously milked with reckless abandon and unbridled system of plunder – the Marange diamond fields. Effectively, it means there is absolutely not even a single substantive or tangible avenue through which the regime may obtain huge amounts of capital to lessen the burden.

That explains Mugabe’s embarrassment of his party also being totally broke. Inevitably, as each day passes, the Zanu PF regime edges closest to a social and political implosion because the whole nation is becoming impatient, angry and agitated. There just can’t be a way of placating the people by the clueless Zanu PF regime.

The more Mugabe remains headstrong and arrogant in the wilderness of virtually no plan nor capacity to solve the crisis, the more the people’s anger grows, towards him and his regime. Breaking point is not a long way, and l do not see six months elapsing before things come to a head in the form of social and political implosion.

Mugabe, yet again, stupidly keeps twitching his fingers and watch the situation get to the breaking point. It has been a permanent feature of Mugabe’s long tenure, that of failing to make decisive moves or decisions before situations get out of hand. For, whether Zanu likes it or not, the situation shall soon present it with two options – of either digging in and crush the protesting masses, or get to the negotiating table.

I totally don’t see the world, even Sadc, brooking a move to crush the masses, and Mugabe is in even more complicated circumstances by virtue of being chairman of the regional grouping. The blowing internal party power struggles compound circumstances for Zanu PF. They expose the leadership failure and make it more vulnerable.

Therefore, it is just a matter of time before Zanu PF gets down to the negotiating table with the opposition and maybe other stakeholders. That, l have no doubt, will result in early polls, and l explain why. Zanu PF would yet again grudgingly seek to forge another deal for a coalition, but, by and large, there won’t be takers for that.

The barbarism and arrogant scuttling of progress of the previous coalition government by Zanu PF shall certainly return to haunt them. No sane person would be under any illusions about the inherent lack of sincerity on the part of Zanu PF, and therefore none would want to go down the garden path of wasting time in a coalition with the failed outfit.

Unfortunately for Zanu PF, where they left off the previous time is exactly where they restart from, because, their nemesis, the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai remains the major force with the people’s support, and therefore keys to rescue the situation. It shall, yet again, be Tsvangirai and his party to play ball and determine what comes out as a formula to solve the national crisis.

I really do not see anything convincing Tsvangirai and the MDC into being fooled by Zanu PF down the garden path of another coalition. Tsvangirai is certainly going to stick to his guns and demand a route towards early elections – l see it eventually becoming the inescapable deal.

Zanu PF may try to rant and rave in disagreement to the demand for early polls, because it knows the trouble that await them, of yet again being under the spotlight through having to implement reforms towards holding credible, free and fair polls. Zanu PF knows very well that ceding its hold on election rigging mechanisms would mean massive defeat at the polls – what with the massive decampaigning of their image and capacity they have been doing during the past 12 months.

Zanu PF will certainly fight hard to resist calls for an early election but without any escape route, because, the worsening crisis would be ratcheting pressure on the regime. The masses would be getting more and more agitated and present a very key pressure point to the regime at the negotiating table.

I forsee Zanu PF eventually giving in and reluctantly going for early elections within the next two years, that is before 2017. It is also important to factor in that last year’s elections didn’t get a very clean bill of approval even from Sadc and the AU, which raised concerns over serious irregularities.

That makes me convinced that the agenda of an election as a way to solving the crisis of legitimacy will quickly get a buy-in and gain traction among the regional bodies. To sum it all, Zanu PF certainly won’t be able to solve the national crisis, and also have anything else to sell or put to work that could help it evade going into an early election.

At the most, a transitional authority with a limited timeframe could be established to implement reforms and prepare for fresh polls. Even that, the demons of arrogance and barbarism that control the levers and influence things in Zanu PF will be totally dismissing and ruling out – but, the circumstances shall certainly compel them, especially the national crisis.

Itai Dzamara is the Editor-In-Chief of Trinity Media (Pvt) LTD (Publishers of The News Leader and The News Leader on Sunday)