By Farayi Machamire
Former Industry minister Nkosana Moyo has been slammed over his presidential ambition by Higher and Tertiary education minister Jonathan Moyo, who argued he has no chance at all against President Robert Mugabe in an election.
This comes as Nkosana recently said he was considering challenging Mugabe in the 2018 elections, as an independent candidate.
The Higher Education minister, who has had his fair share of contesting elections as an independent candidate, said Nkosana was not like France’s newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron — an investment banker turned politician — emerged as a surprise candidate in France’s recent election and gathered more popular support than his rivals.
“…he (Nkosana) thinks he can win the presidency as an independent candidate but unlike Macron he has no political base,” Jonathan slammed Nkosana — a former World Bank official — on Twitter this week.
He had earlier posted a picture of Nkosana, rubbishing its contents which said “Nkosana 4 (sic) president” adding “the man we have been waiting for.”
Jonathan commented: “Tell Macron–oops, I mean Nkosana & his backers that they cannot use the Zimbabwe Bird (a national symbol) as an election campaign symbol!”
France’s 39-year-old Macron is said to have brought some freshness to the country’s political landscape, despite criticism.
He went on to win the hearts of the French electorate and stunned his rivals by winning the election.
As for Nkosana, he has no political party and he recently turned down an offer by the Zimbabwe People First ( ZimPF) to lead the beleaguered political party.
The former banker — famed for publicly speaking out against attacks on businesses and factories by war veterans and later uncharacteristically resigning from Mugabe’s Cabinet about a year after his appointment — said there was need for a paradigm shift in the country’s politics.
He has snubbed an offer to lead Dumiso Dabengwa’s Zapu.
“When you look at the facts on the ground and beyond just Zimbabwe like sub-Saharan Africa, you notice there is one thing common in all our countries, the government of the day runs the country for the party and not for the citizens,” Nkosana told journalists recently on the side-lines of National Youth Development Trust (NYDT) public debate.
“The government of the day runs the country for the benefit of party members as opposed to the benefit of all citizens,” he said.
“My view is that if I get involved in politics, I am going to run as an independent because when you think about it, what type of a president do you want? You want a president who has got responsibility and accepts responsibility for all citizens and not for some citizens.
“A president is a president of a country not of a party. He or she should be capable of being a president even for those who did not vote for him or her. We don’t seem to have that maturity,” Nkosana said.
He addeed that “my own view and conclusion is that for the time being, we need to try the idea of citizens being persuaded to vote for somebody who does not belong to a party”. Daily News
