Voters mustn't give one party too much power

By Conway Nkumbuzo TUtani

This article discusses the worst of the MDC-Ts internecine Mayhem,which has even caused collateral damage outside the main opposition party itself,the party in its wisdom or lack therefore saw it fit to treat the nation to another orgy of violence  in Bulawayo at the weekend.It is stated that supporters of the  party's vice president,Thokozani Lupe,were left blooded  following  a mob attack by professed backers of Nelson Chamisa,who said in his words this  week"anointed successor"to the late MDC-T leader,Morgan Tsvangirai, who died last month.

The background to this chaos be a replication of this erudite observation:"As pointed  out by Putnam (1976),modern political selection fails under the control of local party organisations and other  organised political selectorates:party selectorates tend to select complacent and spectacular candidates,those with established name,image and reputation. This results in the negative selection of party hacks,local celebrities  and processional politicians especially lawyers,who combine  oratory skills with professional autonomy.In a nutshell one may say paradoxically contemporary  leader democracies  fail to develop a reliable system  of a selecting,grooming and protecting leaders,and this failure results in frequent  leadership  vacuums with all their disastorus consequences ".

"I did not say it, shoot the message,not the messenger "it is what exactly happened  in the MDC-T. This has gone according to the script with the rise of Chamisa.To me This shows that Chamisa is not necessarily the best,but that the selection of party"selectorates "ensured his rise;the system was loaded in his favour.This rampage shows that political violence hasn't been as one-sided as some opposition supporter and apologist academia would make it out to be.It has been proved that violence is as embedded and as pervasive  in the MDC-T as in zanu-pf and that party  might as well  boast that it matches zanu-pf in having "degrees in violence "as former president Robert Mugabe bragged when he was at the top of his game.

I believe that ,it is now up to voters  themselves  to rescue the situation  with the general election  booming.It would be much better if they could exercise what is called tactical voting, whereby it occurs with election with two or more candidates more strongly  than their sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome in order to prevent an undesirable outcome such as making one party too much powerful.

Source:NewsDay
https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/03/voters-mustn't-give-one-party-too-much-power/