A Supreme Court packed with Mugabe cronies might have taken the Speakership of Parliament away from the MDC-T but Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party has the numbers and the goodwill from some MP’s in the smaller MDC faction to retain the position.
A new Speaker of Parliament has to be elected at the next sitting and the MDC-T will count on the votes of 99 of its members including PM Tsvangirai, Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe and former Speaker Lovemore Moyo.
Zanu PF on the other hand has 96 votes guaranteed which explains why they have launched a massive police and state persecution of MDC-T MP’s, arresting and detaining them on trumped up charges. Five MP’s have been arrested so far with only 2 being released. More arrests are planned next week.
The smaller faction of the MDC led by Welshman Ncube might be called upon to play king maker as they have 7 MP’s eligible to vote. But as history has shown, Ncube can only count on the loyalty of 3 of those MP’s with the other 4 said to be unhappy at being sidelined for cabinet positions.
In August 2008 Ncube’s party struck a much condemned deal with Zanu PF to try and secure the election of their candidate Paul Themba Nyathi. This backfired as several of their MP’s voted for the MDC-T candidate. Out of its original 10 elected MP’s the party sacked 3 of them for siding with the MDC-T.
Zanu PF is aware they might not win the re-election and one of its ministers Didymus Mutasa was quoted saying “We might not field a candidate. Why can we field a candidate if we are going to lose? But I am sure that there is going to be a lot of horse-trading between parties trying to lure votes from the other.”
Over the weekend Zanu PF officials were claiming former speaker Moyo will not be able to vote claiming he forfeited this when he became speaker. MDC-T Chief Whip Innocent Gonese however dismissed this claim saying;
“Our understanding of the law is that Mr. Lovemore Moyo has voting rights since he is coming to Parliament representing a constituency (Matobo South).”
