Will Tsvangirai survive this time?

While Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai is preparing to take Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front leader Robert Mugabe to court to challenge last week’s election results, the media, some of which was solidly behind him during the campaign, is beginning to question whether he will not sink into political oblivion.

Mugabe won 61 percent of the poll in the just ended elections with his party winning more than two-thirds majority in Parliament.

Tsvangirai has declared the elections null and void claiming there was massive fraud and is preparing to challenge the results in court.

Ian Harding of the British Broadcasting Corporation said “even if the allegations of massive rigging are comprehensively proven, and Zimbabwe’s neighbours eventually grumble and huff about a re-run, President Robert Mugabe has no reason to fear any serious challenge to his now formidable grip on power”.

Having been defeated three times now, Harding said: “Morgan Tsvangirai, must surely be facing the real possibility of political oblivion following his party’s crushing defeat in last week’s election – and there are plenty of people who feel he deserves it.”

Reuters quoted Piers Pigou of the International Crisis Group as saying that Tsvangirai’s denunciation of the vote as a “huge farce” smacked of desperation by a man “profoundly shocked by having had the rug pulled out from under his feet”.

“The bottom line is that the MDC formations signed up for this,” Pigou said. “They have been outmanoeuvred again. One could ask what on earth made them think you could trust the process in the first place.”

Eldred Masunungure said the MDC needed rejuvenation and a change in leadership. “Presently the MDC is in denial, and justifiably so, but its future depends on what it does once it recovers. It needs to remobilise the people and reconnect with the grassroots. It is high time it tried to rejuvenate the leadership. After this kind of electoral tsunami you can’t rest on your laurels. That would be disastrous,” he was quoted as saying.

But The Herald thinks Tsvangirai will not survive. This is now the chance for MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti to take over.

‘‘Biti has survived, but just. The result is a Biti who is in Parliament where Morgan Tsvangirai cannot be, a Biti who interacts with Government which Tsvangirai cannot do, and a Biti who — by virtue of being the most senior of the MDC-T MPs in Parliament — becomes leader of the MDC-T in Parliament,’’ the Herald said.

According to Reuters, Tsvangirai’s biographer Sarah Hudleston did not agree. “Tendai Biti is very able but Morgan is the one with the appeal and I still think that he’s right person for the party. He made a mistake going into a joint government to start with, but I think the MDC will survive. He must now go back to being an opposition politician.”

All Zimbabweans can do is wait and see.

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