BY BLESSED MHLANGA ZANU PF has shifted gear into the 2023 election mode by conducting a series of “victory rallies” across the counties, which observers believe are part of a dry-run towards the next year’s elections.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa will address the first rally today in Epworth amid reports that results of the recently held by-elections sent shockwaves down the ruling party’s corridors.

Despite State resources at its disposal, Zanu PF only managed to bag nine of the 28 contested parliamentary seats against 19 won by the two-month-old Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC).

A report by research institute, Zimbabwe Democracy Institute (ZDI) titled Deterrent of the Zambian Precedence in Zimbabwe warned that the ruling party was pulling all stops to avert a possible defeat in the general elections next year.

Zanu PF director for information Tafadzwa Mugwadi told NewsDay Weekender that Zanu PF would launch “victory star rallies” in Epworth today, before rolling them across the country to woo votes to the party.

Addressing a Zanu PF central committee meeting in Harare yesterday, Mnangagwa said: “I call upon the party leadership and membership in general to remain alive to the cunning strategies of the opposition bent on deceiving the population. Let us never forget the opposition called for the illegal economic sanctions imposed on our country.”

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Mnangagwa told party members to expose poor service delivery in urban councils to de-campaign the opposition as not capable of running council affairs.

He said Zanu PF supporters should be assisted to get national identity documents in the ongoing mobile registration blitz to aid his victory.

“The party must begin to organise and claim our victory polling station by polling station, ward by ward, constituency by constituency, province by province and ultimately, at the national level. To achieve this, the party must scale up the voter registration process across all provinces. Our people must be facilitated to get national registration documents, which are now being issued for free,” Mnangagwa said.

Meanwhile, the CCC yesterday claimed that it was being denied the right to hold meetings, with interim spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere saying this showed that the ruling party “was running scared”.

“The regime in Harare is abusing PoliceZimbabwe to ban the holding of meetings by @CCCZimbabwe. Our meeting scheduled for Thursday was prohibited without just cause. They are running scared,” she said in a tweet.

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