“The second part of the strategy is to divide and rule. Mwonzora’s notice could have applied to all MPs they claim to be their party’s members in Parliament. They have chosen a small group in the hope of isolating them from the larger group. This, they hope, serves as a notice to the remainder of MPs whose position is now precarious. The newfound power of recall now hangs like the sword of Damocles above the heads of the remaining MPs.
“The hope is that the other MPs will be cowed into submission and follow the demands of the group that wants to reconstitute the MDC-T following the Supreme Court judgment. The recall is a strategy to coerce MDC Alliance MPs into supporting the group that was dubiously awarded a judgment by the Supreme Court. They know that an MP’s seat represents an important part of an MP’s personal political economy. It brings prestige, power and material benefits to the individual MP.
“This situation, therefore, represents a stern moral test for each MDC Alliance MP. They must make a choice between safeguarding their personal political economy, which would be selfish or acting for the greater good of the party under which they were elected, the MDC Alliance, which would be selfless.
“To go with the view that they are MDC-T members would be to forsake the MDC Alliance, the party under which they campaigned and were elected into Parliament. It would also be politically duplicitous; fraud on the people who voted them as MDC Alliance representatives.
“The third, which is also a strategy of divide and rule relates to the MDC Alliance as a whole. If Khupe, Mwonzora and Komichi can successfully isolate so-called MDC-T MPs, from the MDC Alliance and the other MDC Alliance MPs carry on, they will leave Chamisa politically vulnerable. The real target of this grand political strategy is the person who provides the most credible political competition to Emmerson Mnangagwa. If the MDC Alliance succumbs to this divide and rule, it will be the end of opposition politics as we have known it for the past two decades. And this will have been achieved by paying one faction of the MDC against the other.”
In response to the recalling of the legislators, the MDC alliance said it was suspending “all participation in Parliament and disengag(ing) from all platforms in which the party has to interact with ZNU- PF pending consultations with the relevant constituencies of the party, that is the electorate and Zimbabweans at large on the decision for a total withdrawal from Parliament.”
It said that “only the MDC Alliance has the power to lawfully recall or redeploy its members of parliament elected under its ticket. No-one else has the mandate to do so, except only the MDC Alliance.”
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