By Shorai Murwira
Opposition party LEAD leader Linda Masarira has castigated the former MDC-T leader Thokozani Khupe and Khalipani Phugeni for publicly fighting the current party leader Douglas Mwonzora.
In a statement, Masarira urged Khupe and Phugeni not to expose the party’s lack of unity to the public.
“Hon. Khupe and Phugeni should display political maturity by not seeking public sympathy in a way that exposes lack of unity in their party,” she said.
“If they are not happy with the Mwonzora leadership they should take proper action internally instead of washing their party’s dirty linen in public.”
Masarira said there was nothing wrong with the current MDC-T leadership stance to form allegiances with the ruling Zanu PF party.
“On the issue of why MDCT sided with Zanu PF, there is nothing wrong with political parties agreeing to act together especially when their interests intersect,” she said.
“They sided with each other during the constitution making process and led the vote YES campaign together and no one seemed to have a problem then.” “This culture of opposing for the sake of opposing is a cancer killing our nation.
“Some politicians seek political relevance by just opposing anything done by government.”
She said it was unfortunate women in politics continue to be used as pawns in a game of political chess, and that the extension of the 60 proportional representation seats in parliament reflected on Government’s unwillingness to comply with the constitutional provision enshrined in Section 17 of ensuring gender balance in all organs of the state and all government organs.
“Women are not children of a lesser God and should not be pretentiously handed power on a silver platter in the name of quotas or affirmative action,” she said.
“Whose quota to benefit who?
“Women who are forwarded on party lists by political parties for those proportional representation seats usually face a lot of abuse and are never chosen on merit but by being the best bootlickers of political leaders.
“These seats have been used to divide women and to give them unequal opportunities to contest in primaries as they are constantly reminded that they have their 60 bacossi seats.”
