Crisis Slams Collapse of MDC Unity Talks

 As the country’s leading political opposition, where a substantial part of the country’s population has put their hope in the quest to resolve the twin crises of legitimacy and governance that the country has been grappling with for the past eight years, the MDC has a national duty not to betray its constituency, CZC spokesman McDonald Lewanika said. In the Coalition’s view, the national good demands that the leadership of the MDC should desist from pursuing parochial party interests and get united in order to confront Zimbabwe’s dictatorship as a united front.
A bid by the two MDC factions to present a united challenge to President Robert Mugabe in elections on March 29 collapsed Sunday, with leaders from two of the main factions blaming each other for making unreasonable demands.
Both MDC leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara however said they would not boycott the vote but would field rival candidates, severely weakening their presidential bid.
Tsvangirai said talks had collapsed over differences about how many candidates to field in the Matabeleland province – a stronghold of the Mutambara MDC.
But Mutambara said talks had broken because Tsvangirai’s group had made unreasonable demands and refused to sign the unity pact. 
Lewanika said the failure by the two parties to unite was not in the national interest because it was premised on individual agendas to get posts rather than the need to rescue the country from the current political and economic quagmire.
This parochial agenda will not benefit either formation of the MDC because the ruling party will simply use the divisive situation in the opposition camp to manipulate the electoral process and outcome, Lewanika said. In this regard, the opposition should desist from assisting the status quo from continuing with its destructive national policies.
He said the leadership of the two formations of the MDC should seriously examine their failure to focus on the national interest and its consequences on the lives of the suffering majority of Zimbabweans. Lewanika added that it was not too late for the MDC to put its house in order.
The MDC should also go back to its history and learn from its past achievements in order to appreciate the need and urgency for unity, Lewanika said. For instance, when the MDC was united in the run-up to the 2000 elections they won 57 seats of the 120 contested ones despite the violence against its supporters by state agents. Its presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai got more than 1.2 million votes against President Robert Mugabe’s controversial 1.6 million votes. This was largely a result of unity in the opposition group and a sense of national focus which made Zimbabweans support the MDC.