by Innocent Mujeri

The Organising Secretary of the MDC-Alliance, Amos Chibaya, was left with egg on his face after only a handful of people attended the launch of that party’s rural campaign in Murehwa, recently.

The MDC-Alliance’s rural campaign dubbed “2020 Munhu wese kumusha” launched in Murehwa last week, was supposed to be replicated in all the country’s ten provinces, but a source within the MDC-Alliance told this publication that the party was considering shelving the plans to avoid humiliation.

“The National Executive Council (NEC) had a meeting to review the launch of the rural campaign recently held in Murehwa. It was agreed that the meetings should be shelved for now as they might expose the party as having no supporters in the rural areas. Chibaya was told to suspend the campaign until further notice,” said the source.

In Murehwa, Chibaya addressed about 35 people. However, some of them departed from the meeting after realising that Chibaya had brought no goodies for them as promised earlier.

At the meeting, Chibaya said the MDC-Alliance had realised that their party was being defeated at the polls because it was lacking the rural vote.

“We have decided to go rural this time after realising that as a party, we were coming short of the rural vote. We have many supporters in Harare, but we cannot say the same in the rural areas. That’s why we launched this campaign called 2020 Munhu wese kumusha because we want to urge rural people to vote for the party,” said Chibaya.

Chibaya came short of confirming that the rigging claims that are usually referred to by the opposition after every electoral defeat are just face savers as the party has no numbers to claim electoral victory.

“Politics is a game of numbers. We don’t have the numbers in the rural areas. We are only concentrated in the towns. I hope by this rural campaign we are launching, we can manage to get some rural votes that can make us win the forthcoming elections,” said Chibaya.

The opposition in Zimbabwe has been losing elections and blaming their loss on the alleged uneven playing filed. However, Chibaya’s meeting confirmed that the opposition has been losing because they lack the huge rural support base to guarantee them electoral victory.

As ZANU PF comes up with people-centred programmes, the MDC A is always campaigning on social media.