MDC savages ‘supermarket’ budget

By Farayi Machamire

HARARE – Former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC says Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa’s 2016 $4 billion “supermarket budget” does not only reflect a collapsing local economy, but proves that President Robert Mugabe is in the sunset of his political career.

Lashing the budget, which Chinamasa himself has pooh-poohed as paltry despite the fact that Zimbabwe is endowed with significant natural and human resources, the MDC said the local economy continued to be a major casualty of “the lack of political legitimacy of the Zanu PF regime”.

“Robert Mugabe is in the sunset of his long political career and as such, all stakeholders should put their heads together and urgently work on resolving the deteriorating socio-economic crisis that is bedevilling our motherland,” the MDC said in a statement yesterday.

The party also said it firmly believed that Mugabe’s resignation was the only starting point in turning around the country’s nose-diving fortunes.

“As a way forward, the MDC calls for the immediate resignation of Robert Mugabe as the president of the country because he is clearly no longer fit for purpose.

“We also call upon the prompt actualisation of the various electoral reforms that are fully set out in the (MDC’s) WReNe (Without Reforms, No Elections) document before fresh and legitimate, free and fair elections can be held in Zimbabwe,” the party said.

“The Zimbabwean economy has been a major casualty of the lack of political legitimacy of the Zanu PF regime.

“The people of Zimbabwe are entitled to be governed by a legitimate and popularly elected government. They don’t deserve to be under the tutelage of an illegitimate and corrupt regime that stole elections on July 31, 2013,” the MDC added.

It said it was “a national embarrassment” that the 2016 National Budget was smaller than the annual budget of the City of Durban in neighbouring South Africa.

“Durban is the third largest city in South Africa after Johannesburg and Cape Town. The 2016 Zimbabwe annual budget is also significantly smaller than the annual budget of Pick & Pay group of supermarkets in South Africa,” the MDC noted.

“As the country is literally burning, the Zanu PF regime remains clueless and visionless. The regime is caught up in endless factional fighting that has placed the country virtually on auto pilot as the competing and antagonistic factions in Zanu PF are working overtime trying to outdo and out-manoeuvre each other.

“The perilous state of both the physical and mental health of the nonagenarian president Robert Mugabe is not making matters any better for the toiling and poverty-stricken masses of Zimbabwe.

“Without a fundamental and holistic leadership change in Zimbabwe, the economy will not improve and will infact, get even worse in the new year,” the MDC said further.

Turning to the Chinese President Xi Jingpin’s visit to Zimbabwe, the party warned Zimbabweans not to expect any economic gains from the visit.

“This so-called historic state visit is in actual fact a public relations exercise that will not bring any meaningful and tangible benefits to the tottering economy of Zimbabwe.

“The Chinese are hugely unimpressed by the unresolved succession crisis in Zanu PF. When president Robert Mugabe paid a state visit to Beijing in August 2014, he was advised, in no uncertain terms, that China will not be able to commit real big money and meaningful investment to Zimbabwe until and unless Robert Mugabe clearly ironed out the succession debacle in his deeply-divided and beleaguered political party, Zanu PF,” the party said.

Source: Daily News