OPPOSITION MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa, who claims he has a legitimate claim to lead the country after rejecting a Constitutional Court (ConCourt) ruling that confirmed President Emmerson Mnangagwa as winner of the July 30 presidential election, says he is now rallying his supporters countrywide to unseat Mnangagwa “peacefully”.
BY BLESSED MHLANGA
The ConCourt on August 24 dismissed Chamisa’s electoral challenge, saying he had failed to prove his allegations of vote fraud, but the opposition leader says the court foiled his bid to subpoena the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to provide proof critical to his case.
Speaking at his party’s headquarters in Harare yesterday, Chamisa maintained that he won the first election since the departure of former President Robert Mugabe last November and that he was not going to wait for the 2023 general elections to face off with Mnangagwa.
“We won, but they announced something different. Now, do we wait for 2023 while we know that we won the election? Is that possible? Now we are in the process of organising our supporters in the country so that we all have one aim, to say ‘what we voted for should be respected; the results that were announced are your own problem, but the vote of the people should be respected’,” Chamisa said.
He claimed to have a grand plan to peacefully remove Mnangagwa and said he would not consider the President’s olive branch handed to him.
“We are going to execute our plans in peace and quiet. Mnangagwa was saying I should go to Parliament. I was not elected to go to Parliament. When I came to Zimbabweans, I said to them, please, give me a chance to go to State House,” Chamisa said.
“The voters gave me the keys to State House, but the keys were stolen. We want our keys back. But for us to get these keys, we need strategic planning of the highest order so that we can do our things in peace and quiet. There is no army, no gun or weapon that can destroy anything whose time has come. So we are planning, plans that are smart and we hope that with your ideas, things will move smoothly.”
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But Zanu PF spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo said the ruling party would not lose sleep over threats to remove Mnangagwa from power because the State had sufficient laws to deal with acts of lawlessness.
“Zanu PF is not worried about that, it is lawlessness. That is why the police are there to deal with lawlessness. The law enforcement agents will deal with that,” he said.
“This country has a Constitution which says elections are held every five years and the Constitutional Court has confirmed that elections are over, and if he (Chamisa) does not want to respect the Constitution, that is lawlessness as far as I am concerned.”
