MDC kick-starts primary elections

By Blessings Mashaya

The Nelson Chamisa-led MDC will kick-start their primary elections today to pick candidates for Zimbabwe’s looming general elections.

This comes as the ruling Zanu PF’s just-ended primary elections have been sullied by accusations of ballot-stuffing, multiple voting and violence, observers and participants said, raising fears of further turmoil in looming national elections. MDC secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora told the Daily News that rival candidates who want are going to meet starting today and if they reach an agreement who to field, they will invite the party leadership to endorse the decision.

“The consensus building is starting tomorrow (today), the candidates themselves meet when they agree on consensus building they will invite us. As for primaries, we are likely to do one province at a given time. We have no access to state resources like Zanu PF,” Mwonzora said.

He said the MDC has managed to look at the appeals and finished the issue on Thursday.

“We have finalised the appeals by some candidates who thought that they were unfairly disqualified. We are going to start with the consensus building,” Mwonzora said.

With the party having resolved to reserve 20 percent of the seats to youths and 50 percent for women, there will be battles of titanic proportions in various constituencies where rookies have dared to take on sitting MPs and other bigwigs in the MDC national standing committee. Daily News