Tsvangirai calls emergency national executive meeting Thursday to decide way forward on bond notes

Full statement:

Tuesday, 10 May 2016

MDC’s emergency national executive meeting set for Thursday

The MDC national executive holds an emergency meeting on Thursday following the economically disastrous decision by the Zanu PF government to bring back the Zimbabwe dollar through the back door.

The party’s shadow cabinet convened today and expressed revulsion at the decision to print bond notes which comes after a similar decision resulted in a meltdown in the country eight years ago. Today’s meeting expressed concern at the plight of the ordinary people  due to bad policies and noted that the situation was likely to get worse, especially for ordinary Zimbabweans most of whom are now in the informal sector. The shadow cabinet meeting heard detailed presentations of how the cash crisis and the proposed bond notes would impact on all the sectors of the economy and the ordinary citizens.

 After three-hours of intense deliberations, the MDC Cabinet resolved that the matter had huge national implications, prompting President Morgan Tsvangirai to urgently summon the party’s national executive on Thursday to enable the executive political organ of the party to sculpt a comprehensive political response to the economic madness. It is the party’s executive political organ, the national executive that will craft the political response to this imminent danger that threatens to plunge the whole country into instant instability and chaos. 

Government’s decision to print the so-called bond-notes, with a value of up to $20, signifies a return to the stressing national times nine years ago. Ordinary Zimbabweans lost their savings; pensioners lost their life-time savings while companies and other institutions were shortchanged as the economy tumbled until the MDC presence in an inclusive government brought stability and unprecedented economic annual growth figures, which peaked at 12percent in 2012.

It is the MDC’s position that the cash crisis which led to the decision to print bond notes stems from a crisis of confidence. There is no confidence in both the economy and in the banks, largely stemming from policy discord and the crisis of legitimacy arising out of the stolen election of 2013. Unfortunately for Zanu PF, the printing of bond notes cannot be a panacea to what is essentially a political crisis that needs a political solution. This government cannot mask illegitimacy under the veil of bond notes that are essentially sanitized newsprint. Bond coins, bond notes all point to the cluelessness of what has become a “bond” government that is running the affairs of State.

The MDC’s national executive holds its extra-ordinary meeting on Thursday, well aware that the country is on the brink of serious instability and that the bond notes will be the death knell to the country’s economy. Zimbabweans have walked this road before. They have not forgotten the dark days when they were poor “quintillionaires.” President Tsvangirai and the party he leads will do all they can to save the country and to return it to logic and common sense.

Luke Tamborinyoka
Presidential Spokesperson and Director of Communications
Movement for Democratic Change

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