Kisinoti Mukwazhe admits financial woes, backs Zanu (PF)

Only three out of the five candidates who had initially submitted their papers to run for presidency in the forthcoming polls will on Wednesday battle it out for the position following the withdrawal of Mukwazhe.

Zanu (PF) President Robert Mugabe, Movement for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and Welshman Ncube, leader of the breakaway MDC faction will stand for election for presidency, after the initial withdrawal of Dumiso Dabengwa, who dropped his bid to form a coalition with Ncube.

In an interview with The Zimbabwean, 43 year old Mukwazhe, who claims that his party had a following of close to 780, 000 supporters, said he decided to pull out of the election race because the country was ambushed into an election and his party did not have the financial capacity to contest the polls.

He said: “Yes it is true. I have withdrawn my candidature for a number of reasons.

“We thought that we would win our court case and get funding from government to enable us to participate in these elections. The court did not rule in our favour and we realised that we could not be part of an election whose date we did not endorse,” he said.

Last month, ZDP’s bid to get funding from government hit a brick wall after the Constitutional Court dismissed Mukwazhe’s application, arguing that it would be grossly “irresponsible and dangerous for government if all political parties were to be funded”.

Mukwazhe accused the media of supporting only two political parties at the expense of other ‘minority’ parties.

“The media is biased towards two political parties. The MDC- T enjoys coverage from both state and private media, while Zanu (PF) manipulates the public media,” he said.

Mukwazhe revealed that he was rallying behind Mugabe for presidency citing that the parties had “similar policies”.

“Zanu (PF) protects the interests of the people because while we acknowledge that there is corruption within the party, it is better than the corruption within the MDC- T,” said Mukwazhe.

“We would have loved to form a coalition with the MDC- T but they refused to write a memorandum of understanding with us opting for a verbal agreement instead.

“People should stop blaming Ncube for refusing to form a coalition with Tsvangirai because he (Tsvangirai) and his team want to dictate the terms,” he added.