Tsvangirai reads riot act

Politics
Tsvangirai said the agreement was informed by the MDC-T’s national council resolutions of December 2016 and August 2017 and therefore, could not be rescinded by a personal opinion of a leader.

MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has censured his secretary general Douglas Mwonzora over his claims that the party was going ahead with the selection of candidates for next year’s elections in violation of a coalition agreement with other parties.

BY OBEY MANAYITI

Tsvangirai was forced to react after his MDC Alliance partners accused the MDC-T of dishonesty and trying to collapse the coalition.

The MDC Alliance is a composition of seven parties namely MDC-T, Transform Zimbabwe, Multiracial Christian Democrats (MCD), ZimPF, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Zanu Ndonga and MDC.

Mwonzora had said MDC-T would embark on a process to select candidates in all the constituencies as there was no agreement as to the distribution of seats.

However, in a statement yesterday, Tsvangirai said Mwonzora’s utterances were unfortunate and misleading.

“I would like to state categorically that the MDC-T has entered into an electoral alliance agreement in good faith with its partners on August 5 2017. That agreement includes seats allocation and is binding to all parties,” the MDC-T leader said.

“The MDC-T elections directorate will issue guidelines on candidate selection for seats allocated to it, and such guidelines are yet to be issued out.”

Tsvangirai said the agreement was informed by the MDC-T’s national council resolutions of December 2016 and August 2017 and therefore, could not be rescinded by a personal opinion of a leader.

“The national council, the supreme decision making body in between congresses, has been appraised of every turn on the negotiations with our Alliance partners,” he said.

“In addition, our secretary general or any other leader other than the president has no authority to speak on matters pertaining to the Alliance unless authorised to do so by myself and such authority was not given to him.”

Tsvangirai said there was no going back on the alliance as elections loom mid-next year.