MDC-T warns of civil unrest if present economic crisis continues

The Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai has warned that civil unrest could break-out in Zimbabwe because millions of people have no access to food and the government is struggling to pay civil servants.

In a statement today, the main opposition party said the only solution was to bring back legitimacy of the government.

President Robert Mugabe therefore had so step down and call for fresh elections ghat will be supervised by the United Nations.

“The MDC calls upon President Robert Mugabe and his entire cabinet to immediately step down and to allow for the holding of free, fair and credible elections that will be run and supervised by the United Nations with the active participation of both SADC and the AU,” the party said.

“As currently constituted, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is completely incapable of running an election that will pass the test of legitimacy. Besides ZEC being broke, the ZEC secretariat is packed with hard line CIO agents and other security operatives who are determined to rig any election in favour of the ruling but crumbling ZANU-PF regime.”

The MDC-T says the 2013 elections, which it lost dismally, were rigged but the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front has not been able to rig the economy.

“Although ZANU-PF promised to create 2.2 million jobs between 2013 and 2018, the statistics are very grim since no less than 2 million vendors and loafers have been off-loaded onto the job market since July 31, 2013.

“Our import bill is around US$6 billion against an export bill of around US$2.9 billion. This huge balance of payment mismatch is creating havoc in the financial markets. Currently, the country is facing a debilitating shortage of cash and thousands of people are now spending several hours in bank queues as they patiently wait to access their hard-earned money.

“The prevailing cash shortages are symptomatic of an economy that has totally gone off the rails. Even the proposed introduction of bond notes (which, in any event, are Zimbabwe dollars by another name) will not in any way arrest the mayhem that is currently obtaining in the country’s financial markets.”

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