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to Parliament – and just as well since that revolutionary party, which brought the Independence that people now enjoy with some having the luxury of being constipated on it, has touted itself as “the people’s party”.
There have been grosses, and genuine ones too in previous elections about candidates being lumped on party members to vote for, and, even lame ducks have warmed their way to that supreme lawmaking institution because people voted for those candidates only on the basis of their love and support of their party.
The upshot of all that candidate imposition has either been the elected Member of Parliament had little or no allegiance to the electorate, which compelled him or her to return to the people to seek inputs to take to Parliament or, back to the people; or, the voters had little trust or faith to back the parliamentarian with their full mandate because the MP was not their choice for Parliament in the first place.
That, however, does not suggest that all MPs imposed by the party and electorate should be painted with the same brush.
The important point here, and one that Zanu-PF appears to recognise by revising its rules regarding the selection of candidates for Parliament, is that “people power should be visited in the voters as a way of empowering them, so that the MPs will be fully accountable to the electorate as personifying the party and work their hearts out to return the people’s support and trust, by ensuring that the interests of the people, namely developmental projects are initiated by the MPs also on behalf of their party and Government.
To date, those MPs imposed on the voiceless may or may not have stayed mum in parliament, having little or no input from the electorate whom the MP either felt he or she had no obligation to consult, or with whom the voters were reluctant to entrust their grievances with.
So, the news that Zanu-PF is revising its electoral rules governing primary elections to empower members at the grassroots level to choose members for general elections will undoubtedly be welcomed with ululations and whistling by the masses out there for the party’s recognition of the power reposed in them to send the right people to Parliament as their representatives – people who are unlikely to kick the electorate in the teeth.
The good news was announced by the party’s chairman Cde Simon Khaya Moyo and reported in the press recently.
When the new rules are implemented, Zimbabweans might witness what once happened in Tanzania under Mwalimu Julius Nyerere decades ago when long-serving ministers from Chama Cha Mapinduzi party lost elections simply because they had distanced themselves from the “povo” (masses) who in turn showed them just who had the last laugh when power games were played freely and fairly.
It is not the will of this pen to irresponsibly alarm Zimbabwe’s own ministers, but the axe might fall on those minister MPs who have closed themselves up in their air-conditioned offices and cruise the neighbourhood in their posh cars. Their rural electorate are an afterthought only becoming important when election time is at hand.
When the revised new rules come into effect, they will give Zanu-PF voters (carte blanche) rights to reward diligent MPs with a return to Parliament, the slovenly ones a consignment to obscurity, and the brand new MPs with the baptism of fire to demonstrate their mettle. Times are changing and the country’s revolutionary party has to move with the times too, or else, it risks becoming a proverb in the future.
Equally so, Zanu-PF members should not remain sedentary on the party’s liberation record, believing that all will be well in the future, instead of making that party as an engine to drive the country forward socially, economically and politically. That way, not only will Zanu-PF attract more members to itself; but, it will vindicate itself as a party of the people, which the leaders say it is.
Thus, by changing its rules to fit in with the changing political and economic environment, the party will also be reformed to conform to changing times with their changing economic and political dynamics across the globe.
That way, party members across the board, are given a brave new heart of commitment to duty and country while the party itself receives a bold new face.
Perhaps, the last but not least poignant message is that those leaders whose track record of diligence and loyalty to party and country is stored in the hearts of the voters, and who put God before self, not the other way round, need not fear any political winter ahead or them.
The forever – faithful Lord willsurely re-establish and again increase them.
But, not so those people infatuated with and hallucinated by power for power’s sake to become some kind of demigods and for whom God’s favour might remain an ever receding mirage.