Tsvangirai ready to join a coalition as long as he is the presidential candidate

Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai has spelt out conditions under which his party can join a coalition the main one being that the parties must agree to field one presidential candidate, one parliamentary candidate and one local government candidate for each contested seat.

It, however, says the presidential candidate must be selected on the basis of the best individual who can win an election for the coalition against President Robert Mugabe, and the only person who has beaten Mugabe before is Tsvangirai himself.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, however, said Tsvangirai had not won enough votes for an outright victory necessitating a run-off from which Tsvangirai pulled out because of violence.

The MDC-T literally says it must field all the candidates because one of the conditions is that  the party, which based on past performance and/or other factors, is the strongest electorally in a given constituency must field the candidate for the coalition.

Below is Tsvangirai’s statement in full:

Tuesday, 13 December 2016

President Tsvangirai's statement to the press following a meeting of the national council

Introduction

Welcome to this press conference that we have called after robust meetings of the national executive and the national council. The national executive met yesterday and the national council, the party’s supreme decision-making body in between Congresses has just been meeting in this room today.

The party’s organs have had robust debate on the crisis engulfing the country and noted with concern the deteriorating situation in the country. The executive and council noted that the Zanu PF government has dismally failed to address the plight of the people.

The signs are ominous for the coming year, especially with the smuggling in of the Zimdollar through the backdoor. However, the bond notes have provided a false hope and we understand that it is already trading on the parallel market. The fake money has just begun claiming its true worthless value. 

From ordinary Zimbabweans struggling to survive to civil servants yet to get their bonuses, times are tough. Yet in the middle of all this, we have a ruling party that has evidently run out of ideas. Only last week, we had the President delivering a supposed State of the Nation Address (SONA) which turned out to be an empty statement that omitted the key issues. The President failed to touch the crux of the matters affecting the people such as the worsening state of the economy and a cash crisis which has seen people sleeping in bank queues to access their money.

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