2022 By-elections: A tale of everything and nothing to lose
Hosia Mviringi
As Zimbabweans line up to cast their vote in today’s countrywide by-elections, it is telling from the build up that there is indeed everything to lose for others, while for others it is a mere dress rehearsal and dry run for bigger things yet to come.
While for ZANU PF, today’s Municipal and House of Assembly elections are going to be a dry run for the 2023 harmonised elections, the Citizens for Coalition for Change (CCC) band has everything to lose.
Most of the contested seats are a result of Parliamentary and Municipal recalls of CCC members when the outfit broke away from the main MDC formation.
For ZANU PF, it is a dry run and a chance to measure the impact of their development programs so far aimed at making life better for urban dwellers. ZANU PF has been making tremendous progress in trying to reconnect with the urban voters whose alienation from the ruling party has been evident since the early 2000s mainly as a reflection of their suffering at the hands of economic sanctions.
The same players in the CCC agitated and called for imposition of sanctions on the country, resulting in until suffering of the people, which has been erroneously blamed on the ruling party.
This election has thus presented a chance for ZANU OF to correct that narrative and set the record straight, while undertaking life changing programs which directly benefit the grassroots.
The Second Republic has been actively engaging and reconnecting with the urban voters through such interventions as the Emergency Road Rehabilitation Program which has changed the way motorists navigate the roads in cities.
Under the prolonged leadership of the MDC cum CCC, service delivery had deteriorated, from uncollected garbage, ever-bursting sewerage pipes and dry water taps, all at the hands of successive opposition councils.
The ZANU PF government has intervened in such Cities as Harare through the procurement of pumping equipment to rescue the water provision function of Council, while in Bulawayo the Nyamandlovu Aquifer water pipeline renewed life and hope for the Metropolis while the longer term and decisive Gwayi-Shangani Water pipeline materialises in earnest.
The Presidential Borehole Drilling Program has seen such urban centres as St Mary’s in Chitungwiza being prioritised to ensure that residents have access yo clean potable water.
These are some of the programs that must guide the voters’ decision at the ballot today after decades of mismanagement, corruption and incompetence at the hands of a foreign sponsored opposition.
Of course the pressure is upon the CCC to prove a point by regaining those seats they lost through recalls while seeking to make a head start in their over ambitious quest to form the next government in 2023.
The CCC is under intense pressure to recover lost ground and to convince their handlers that they are worth the sponsorship dime, on it’s own a mammoth task against a resurgent, remodelled, renewed, a re-oriented and reconnected ZANU PF whose major target is to at least increase is numbers in urban areas.
Of course judging by the response to the Presidential rallies in St Mary’s Chitungwiza, Epworth, Chegutu, Kwekwe and Binga, ZANU PF looks set to cause major upsets to to the urban voter patterns.
Indeed the party is sure to snatch a significant number of seats from the opposition, a feat that Is sure to make the opposition sweat come 2023.
Today’s elections are a battle for survival and relevance by the dormant and incompetent opposition and a chance to extent tentacles by the ruling party.
Let’s all go out and vote peacefully. At the end Zimbabwe must win.
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