Political Parties Gamble For Votes Shame Makoshori 11 Jul 2013 PM Tsvangirai . . .PM promises bread, no butter ON January 27, 1980, President Robert Mugabe walked into Highfield suburb’s Zimbabwe Grounds to be greeted by a thunderous applause from cheering and admiring supporters. President Mugabe, whose arrival from Maputo, from where he had directed the country’s liberation struggle, drew the largest and most excited supporters than other liberation movements that were already on the ground. In their book, The Struggle for Zimbabwe, writers David Martin and Phyllis Johnson, said President Mugabe was “clearly awed” by the massive crowd at Zimbabwe Grounds “spreading as far at the eye could see”. He was not the Statesman that he is today. He was a little known presidential aspirant with “little” chances of landing the prime ministerial job he assumed after the country’s first democratic elections that year. That day 33 years ago, President Mugabe was not entering Zimbabwe Grounds to announce an election manifesto. He was delivering the birth of an independent country after close to a century of colonial administration and a liberation war that killed 50 000 fighters.On Friday last week, President Mugabe was back at Zimbabwe Grounds after 33 years at the helm of the country to launch his party’s manifesto for the landmark general elections set for July 31. Spotting his trademark clinched fist, he was again greeted by a sea of placard waving youthful supporters. They were clad in the green and yellow ZANU-PF regalia, urging him to press on with his re-election bid, in spite of the difficulties that have confronted ZANU-PF, which has been accused of running down a once promising economy. He admitted that stakes were heavily tipped against ZANU-PF. But the ZANU-PF leader declared to stage a strong fight to eclipse Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T party. The MDC-T has made inroads into ZANU-PF’s strongholds since 1999, when it was launched. “It is a battle for survival,” President Mugabe told supporters. “This should be a fight for our survival…I say to them (ZANU-PF candidates) go yeah fight the battle and come back to tell us you have won…give a vigorous and devastating fight,” he emphasised. But on Sunday, two days after President Mugabe rallied his supporters to put up a brave campaign, he got a sharp reaction from the MDC-T, which vowed to dislodge him and stressed that it was necessary for him to choose Zimbabwe Grounds as the platform for a potential exit. The MDC-T has a 30-page election manifesto outlining a range of political, economic and social reforms it wants to undertake should it win the elections. The manifesto promises to tackle grinding poverty and attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). It also promises to create one million jobs in five years and build a US$100 billion economy within 27 years. Tsvangirai said the MDC-T would rehabilitate roads, build houses, provide free primary education and free treatment for Aids and cancer patients, save one million orphans from starvation and come up with a programme that would drive Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth to eight percent per annum until 2018. He promised to tackle corruption, enforce public accountability, deal with impunity and mismanagement, arrest rights abuses and all forms of ills he blamed on ZANU-PF. But the MDC-T manifesto fails to address the tricky economic situation that has turned banks upside down and triggered a decay of social service provision. Less than four million of the 12,9 million Zimbabweans are unemployed, up from one million in 1999. The country is in debt distress, with US$10 billion in unsettled commitments. Sanctions have cost the country over US$42 billion and a fresh spell of corporate failures has hit Zimbabwe. Just like the ZANU-PF manifesto, the ambitious blueprint, which appeared to be a regurgitation of the Medium Term Policy launched in 2011, only gave a general review of the economic crisis. It lacked detail. A US$100 billion economy by 2040, for instance, would be achievable only at a growth rate of nine percent per annum, which translates into an additional US$3,7 billion to GDP for 27 years. He projected eight percent GDP growth until 2018. The manifesto was silent on what strategies would be implemented to achieve this target. Political commentator, Takura Zhangazha, said the catalyst to a winning jobs strategy would be attracting FDI. He said both ZANU-PF and the MDC-T have failed to explain how their policies would translate into jobs. “Neither of the two parties has given a proper assessment of how that FDI will translate into jobs,” he said. Zhangazha said the MDC-T has been contradicting itself on employment policies, preaching civil service job cuts, at the same time promising opportunities for the unemployed. “Things are being done in isolation of each other,” he told The Financial Gazette. With no strong FDI plan, which must be driven by investment incentives and tax holidays, the pace and scope of growth targeted by the MDC-T could remain a pipedream. Zimbabwe has been grappling with the effects of a financial and political meltdown that ended in 2008. Still, the country is failing to put together a solid foundation to drive an economic rebound. Power shortages, access to finance, brain drain and an ageing infrastructure still haunt industries. In fact, government has severely underestimated the depth of the economic crisis. Zimbabwe requires US$14 billion to rehabilitate infrastructure, US$5 billion to recapitalise mines and US$7 billion to retool struggling industries. These figures dwarf the US$8,3 billion government said was required in 2009. An MDC-T government would need to create 200 000 jobs per annum until 2018 to achieve its one million employment plan, or at least 10 fresh investments of the magnitude of platinum giant, Zimplats Holdings in five years. Another economic analyst fired a broadside at both parties for failing to elaborate their manifestos. “For the MDC-T, what we want are concrete ideas, not their wish list,” he said. “They are not giving the proper roadmap on how to achieve their wish list. They are not addressing, for instance, the serious issues that have been raised by the mining industry. Mining is a sensitive area, they chose to leave its issues out,” he added. The MDC-T manifesto, like ZANU-PF’s, failed to spell out a robust strategy of how they would whet potential investors’ appetite to put Zimbabwe into their shopping cart. They failed to address the standoff between government and the mining industry over taxes. Today’s risk averse investors, led by fund managers concerned with short-term returns, flock to destinations with guarantees for growth, profits, consistent policies and power supply among others. In the heat of electioneering, the danger is that Tsvangirai could be promising things that might ricochet on him and put him at odds with the electorate. It is also quite clear from the manifestos that ZANU-PF is still entangled in socialist and command economics, while MDC-T appeared far on the right. The promised establishment of a national prosecuting authority, independent complaints and gender commissions, promotion of self-regulation for the media, repeal of draconian laws and introduction of a facility to compensate pensioners and depositors who lost savings when the Zimbabwe dollar crashed in 2008, were among its plans to ease the burden on people. It would disband the Joint Operations Command, establish and enforce a code of conduct for members of the security service. The rest of its proposals were the usual electioneering niceties promised by politicians. Tsvangirai was confident that the MDC-T had put forward a winning manifesto. He declared he would be calling the shots from State House by August. The tragedy, however, was that while the number crunching games kicked off at the weekend, with both sides battling to outwit another, implementation of election manifestos seldom become a priority post elections. Successive Parliaments have been unable to press the Executive to deliver. The Fourth Estate, the media, has been turned into a toothless bulldog by draconian media laws in Zimbabwe enacted after 2000. There has been nobody to do the checks and balances. Fingaz
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 06:10:21 +0000
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