OPPOSITION MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday blasted Acting President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Vice- President Phelekezela Mphoko for being clueless to turn around the comatose economy and labelled them pseudo-reformists and “unrepentant hardliners”.
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Addressing journalists at his party headquarters in Harare where he was outlining his party’s vision for 2015, the former Prime Minister said: “The signs of national leadership failure are now even more glaring for everyone to see, with government now literally lurching from one crisis to the other. With paralysis everywhere, the President [Robert Mugabe], insensitive to the overwhelming national crisis, has delegated his appointed green lieutenants to manage the crisis whilst he goes on leave, to the extent of even extending the same.
“There have been changes in the leadership of both Zanu PF and the government by the appointment of two new Vice- Presidents. Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko were added into the cockpit of both party and government. It is simply a cosmetic change without any substantial impact on the direction of the country,” Tsvangirai said.
“The newly-appointed Vice-Presidents have their work clearly cut out for them. But predictably, they cannot extricate themselves from Mugabe’s ruinous and disastrous legacy. They are entrapped in the same policy failure that has characterised Zanu PF governance culture in the past 35 years.
“Attempts have been made by Mnangagwa, the Acting President, and some of his acolytes to brand themselves as reformists when in fact they are unrepentant hardliners.”
He added: “There are those who are so naive as to believe that token changes in the cockpit can lead to realignment of our politics and that those token changes can spearhead a reform agenda.
“In the case of the Acting President, he has a tainted record that Zimbabweans will never forget both in terms of his role in Gukurahundi, repression in the presidential runoff of 2008 as Minister of Defence and the electoral theft of 2013.”
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Tsvangirai further said if Mnangagwa was committed to implementation of legislative reforms, he should have taken advantage of his being Justice minister and the leader of government business in Parliament to implement them without delay.
Meanwhile, Tsvangirai pleaded with leaders of all opposition parties and civil society organisations to bury their political differences and participate in a national convergence conference being organised by his MDC-T party to “resolve the national crisis”.
He said the conference was tentatively scheduled for the end of March this year.
