Political Reporter
The opposition MDC Alliance is mulling launching psychological operations meant to portray itself as a party that would win the impending 2023 Harmonised Elections.
A highly placed source who spoke to this publication said reality had dawned on the MDC-A leadership after its rural mobilisation campaigns that the party would not win the next elections and were now mulling psyching up people to reject ZANU PF’s 2023 electoral victory.
“At a recent high profile meeting attended by a few selected party think tanks, it was agreed that the party should launch psychological warfare meant to discredit expected ZANU PF’s 2023 electoral win. The party resolved to conduct some celebrations across the country before the final announcement of the 2023 election results. The idea is to have a basis to dispute the final results and claim that elections were rigged in favour of ZANU PF,” said the source.
The source also added that the MDC-A is going to conduct some bogus election polls that will falsely point to an MDC-A victory. The source further said that the MDC-A think tanks agreed to flood the social media ahead of the polling day with messages that insinuate that the party is going to win the elections.
“The think tanks suggested that ahead of the 2023 polling day, they should flood the social media with messages that suggest that the MDC Alliance is going to overwhelmingly win the elections. They agreed that they should also peddle propaganda that ZANU PF is contemplating rigging elections and they are also going to pay some newspaper editors to peddle this false narrative,” added the source.
The source added that the MDC-A was facing huge pressure from its handlers who are demanding that it should win the next presidential elections. So in a bid to cover up their failures and shortcomings, they are now contemplating using rigging claims and premature celebrations as a scapegoat for the impending defeat.
According to the source, the MDC-A has come up with these psychological operations after realising that its rural mobilisation campaign has found few takers. The source added that ZANU PF’s successes such as Pfumvudza and massive infrastructure development across the country have sent shockwaves within the MDC-Alliance who now view their chances of winning the next elections as largely slim.
Efforts to get a comment from MDC-A national spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere were futile as her mobile phones were not reachable.
