Zimbabwe's Opposition At Its Weakest Since 1999, Says Jonathan Moyo
Self-exiled former ZANU PF politburo member Jonathan Moyo has said the opposition CCC is not prepared for the upcoming general elections and will lose dismally.
Moyo said this while commenting on the results of a recent survey by Afrobarometer and the Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) which showed that CCC leader Nelson Chamisa’s support has fallen by 6% since June 2022.
The former Information Minister who is widely believed to be in Kenya, said CCC’s lack of structures, office bearers and policies will cost it dearly in the general elections. Said Moyo:
The widely reported Afrobarometer findings which have rattled CCC confirm a fact whose writing has been on the wall since the March 2022 by-elections when Advocate Nelson Chamisa decided to establish CCC in his own personal image with no constitution, no structures, no office bearers and no policies. To this day, with the general election set for 23 August 2023, CCC has not been formally launched.
It is no wonder that, as things stand, CCC is the weakest pre-election [main] opposition party since the emergence of the MDC in 1999 ahead of the 2000 parliamentary election.
CCC’s structural weaknesses as a political party played out in full public view during its disastrous candidate selection process and at the Nomination Court when, due to self-evident disorganisation arising from its lack of structures, the party had triple and double candidates; it failed to submit its 10 partylist candidates for the Bulawayo metropolitan province; and all of its 12 National Assembly constituency candidates submitted their nomination papers late in controversial and illegal circumstances after 4 pm on 21 June 2023, when the Nomination Court [which had started receiving nomination papers on 10 June 2023] had closed its doors by law.
As if to dramatise the unprecedented disorganisation of the CCC, one of the candidates, [Gift Siziba]
– who is a leading runner for Advocate Chamisa – shockingly submitted his nomination paper at 1:00 am on 22 June 2023, which was not the prescribed nomination court day.With 43 days to go before polling day, time is running out for Chamisa’s CCC.
Given the party’s messy candidate selection process and the Nomination Court debacle in Bulawayo set to be heard in the Bulawayo High Court on 19 July 2023, and the negative Afrobarometer findings, it is going to be a hard ask and a tall order for CCC to turn its fortunes around by 23 August 2023!
Moyo has been a vocal critic of Chamisa and CCC since he fell out with the MDC Alliance, CCC’s forerunner, a few years ago.
More: Pindula News
