OPPOSITION MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has wasted no time chairing a meeting of the MDC Alliance principals as the campaign for next year’s general election gathers momentum.
BY RICHARD CHIDZA
Tsvangirai, who has been endorsed as the presidential candidate for a grouping of pro-democracy parties under the umbrella of the MDC Alliance, met his co-principals in Harare yesterday for the first time in weeks after being taken ill to South Africa.
In a statement, Tsvangirai said the meeting had resolved to trigger a nationwide programme that will see different structures of their parties working together.
“The principals resolved that all party organs nationally must convene to establish alliance co-ordinating committees and immediately organise joint activities with specific reference to voter education and registration mobilisation at every level,” Tsvangirai said.
He added that the respective national organisers of the parties to the MDC Alliance would spearhead the programme.
Tsvangirai said the indaba also established “various national alliance committees” for the smooth running of the general election campaign. Zimbabweans will go to the polls next year and Tsvangirai despite failing health has remained defiant declaring his wish to depose Zanu PF’s presidential candidate the soon-to-be 94-year-old President Robert Mugabe.
“(The committees) include communications, organising and networks, international relations, legal services, electoral reforms, youth and women. Professor Welshman Ncube (MDC leader) will be the Alliance spokesperson,” the former Prime Minister said.
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“The Alliance urges the people of Zimbabwe to register in their numbers as we prepare for watershed 2018 elections. At the heart of the motivation for the formation of the Alliance was to avoid splitting the vote in favour of the status quo.”
Following the formation of the MDC Alliance led by Tsvangirai, former Energy minister Elton Mangoma was this week also endorsed as presidential candidate for another opposition coalition, whose other leading figures are liberation war stalwart Zapu’s Dumiso Dabengwa and former Sadc secretary-general Simba Makoni.
Mangoma will front the Coalition for Democrats (CODE) in next year’s elections.
Former Vice-President Joice Mujuru who at one time was expected to join hands with Tsvangirai in order to present a formidable challenge to Mugabe yesterday also announced her own coalition with fringe opposition groups dubbed the People’s Rainbow Coalition.
