AMHVoices: Khupe shredding MDC constitution

By The NewsDay | Jun. 8, 2020 | 3 Min read

THE feud within the MDC family is a result of the perception by the Supreme Court that processes made to appoint people into positions, from the appointments of Nelson Chamisa and Elias Mudzuri as deputy presidents and that of Chamisa first as acting president and then as president were made ultra vires the MDC-T constitution.

By Kennedy Kaitano, Our Reader

The two things that the court order required Thokozani Khupe as acting MDC president to stick to were the instruction to convene the extraordinary congress and to observe the constitution as it relates to the holding of a congress.

Everything else done outside the mandate provided to Khupe by the court is against the rule of law, hence should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves. Your claims and those by those in your faction that you respect the rule of law and democratic values are but empty cheap talk that does not reflect your real intentions.

The recall of MDC Alliance parliamentarians, the purported expulsion and the nicodemus holding of WhatsApp council meetings to which those who you do not see eye to eye with from the MDC-T 2014 were not invited, the nocturnal invasion and capture of Harvest House using the police and the army are all acts that are not in line with the Supreme Court ruling and evidence of your failure to adhere to constitutionalism and democratic values which you claim to uphold.

Whether these invidious acts were executed under your instruction, or were executed by those you are working with, the blame lies squarely on you as you were the person tasked by the ruling to prepare for a congress. If these acts of terror are being perpetuated by some of your colleagues, then you are now fully aware of the type of people you are dealing with. If your colleagues are colluding with rogue elements in the army and police to forcibly evict MDC Alliance from a building without the requisite court order, that is a serious crime which a genuine government should act very strongly against, but its silence speaks volumes.

As said before, this Supreme Court judgment is only implementable with the full co-operation of all stakeholders, but your move to eject some people from the 2014 structures from the offices through your action of last Friday is a big demonstration to the Supreme Court that you and the faction of the MDC-T you lead have some other motives than implementing the court ruling.

I will not go into the details about the right to use Harvest House or the eviction processes that had to be followed if your faction had rights over other members of the 2014 MDC-T structures, but there are people, for instance, like the 2014 women assembly chairperson Lynette Karenyi-Kore who by virtue of her position is still one of the people who are supposed to be part of the extraordinary congress preparation. How does the police justify barring Karenyi-Kore from the building and arresting her for that matter? All this under your instruction!