MDC-T youth leader for Masvingo made this point to Chamisa when he addressed a rally in Bikita, but he was told to shut up.
“The Alliance document has a clause to the effect that the party most popular in a specific constituency will provide candidates. I made a declaration in front of the late Tsvangirai that some of the constituencies which we are emotionally connected to will not be challenged by our Alliance partners,” Gumbi told Chamisa.
“My request Mr president is that you negotiate with your Alliance partners to give us space so that we arrange our programmes and they do theirs. On the issue of sharing constituencies, our Alliance partners must realise that there are emotional interests on some seats like Bikita because some people were killed and tortured here. So I will only allow someone to contest in those constituencies that our people suffered over my dead body.”
Chamisa was blunt. “When we give you direction you follow, you don’t come and question why it has been done the way it is. We however, will consider the strongest candidate in each constituency.”
This was in essence double-talk because Alliance partners have already been allocated constituencies to contest.
Although Chamisa is campaigning across the country, he seems to be focusing only on his post that of the presidency. He has been totally silent about the legislators yet this could be the Alliance’s undoing.
To make matters worse, there are already tell-tale signs of uneasy among the MDC-T supporters as they feel that the party is imposing candidates on the people.
The same thing happened in 2013 and that backfired terribly.
First, primary elections were postponed. When they were held people protested against the imposition of candidates resulting in 28 standing as independent candidates.
Jessie Majome has already sounded the alarm bell.
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