Currently Chamisa is not in government or in Parliament. The leader of the opposition in Parliament is his party chairperson Thabitha Khumalo while the leader of the opposition in the Senate is Elias Mudzuri one of his three party vice-presidents.
Chamisa flatly refused to accept the post of leader of the opposition fearing a backlash from his supporters because he has argued all along that he won the election.
“I do not want to be a leader of the opposition in parliament because I’m not part of the opposition. We are the ruling and reigning party. We won the election on the 30th of July. People voted for us,” he told the Voice of America.
Chamisa instead called for the setting up of a national transitional authority to steer the country back to legitimacy and set five demands for negotiations.
The demands are:
- Immediately resolving and returning to legitimacy and the will of the people
- Undertaking comprehensive economic, political and electoral reforms
- Prioritising nation building and peace building
- End international isolation through collective engagement on the back of reforms
- Resolving the emergency economic and humanitarian situation
Only one condition may be a bone of contention, that of resolving and returning to legitimacy. ZANU-PF argues that the question of legitimacy was resolved by the electorate and endorsed by the country’s highest court, the Southern African Development Community and the African union which were represented by the heads of those organisations at the swearing in ceremony of Mnangagwa on 26 August.
One of Mnangagwa’s two deputies Kembo Mohadi was straight to the point. He said ZANU-PF wanted the MDC to recognise that Mnangagwa was the President of Zimbabwe before any talks. Period.
“They can treat him differently as the leader of ZANU-PF, but not when it comes to the country, we will not allow that,” Mohadi said.
“We want unity, which is one of our mandates to get the people of Zimbabwe together and speak with one voice, work and progress together and this is important. In fact, we want them (opposition parties) to be part of Zimbabwe. We don’t want them to be left out.”
On the walk-outs, Mohadi said: “We want all this to be a thing of the past because he is the President of Zimbabwe, not of ZANU-PF, when it comes to government. He is a President of everyone. Even his enemies must recognise that he is their President too,”
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