Source: Ex-minister slammed over presidential ambitions – DailyNews Live
Farayi Machamire 27 May 2017
HARARE – Former Industry minister Nkosana Moyo has been slammed over his
presidential ambition by Higher and Tertiary education minister Jonathan
Moyo, who argued he has no chance at all against President Robert Mugabe
in an election.
This comes as Nkosana recently said he was considering challenging Mugabe
in the 2018 elections, as an independent candidate.
The Higher Education minister, who has had his fair share of contesting
elections as an independent candidate, said Nkosana was not like France’s
newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron – an investment banker turned politician – emerged as a surprise
candidate in France’s recent election and gathered more popular support
than his rivals.
“…he (Nkosana) thinks he can win the presidency as an independent
candidate but unlike Macron he has no political base,” Jonathan slammed
Nkosana – a former World Bank official – on Twitter this week.
He had earlier posted a picture of Nkosana, rubbishing its contents which
said “Nkosana 4 (sic) president” adding “the man we have been waiting
for.”
Jonathan commented: “Tell Macron–oops, I mean Nkosana & his backers that
they cannot use the Zimbabwe Bird (a national symbol) as an election
campaign symbol!”
France’s 39-year-old Macron is said to have brought some freshness to the
country’s political landscape, despite criticism.
He went on to win the hearts of the French electorate and stunned his
rivals by winning the election.
As for Nkosana, he has no political party and he recently turned down an
offer by the Zimbabwe People First ( ZimPF) to lead the beleaguered
political party.
The former banker – famed for publicly speaking out against attacks on
businesses and factories by war veterans and later uncharacteristically
resigning from Mugabe’s Cabinet about a year after his appointment – said
there was need for a paradigm shift in the country’s politics.
He has snubbed an offer to lead Dumiso Dabengwa’s Zapu.
“When you look at the facts on the ground and beyond just Zimbabwe like
sub-Saharan Africa, you notice there is one thing common in all our
countries, the government of the day runs the country for the party and
not for the citizens,” Nkosana told journalists recently on the side-lines
of National Youth Development Trust (NYDT) public debate.
“The government of the day runs the country for the benefit of party
members as opposed to the benefit of all citizens,” he said.
“My view is that if I get involved in politics, I am going to run as an
independent because when you think about it, what type of a president do
you want? You want a president who has got responsibility and accepts
responsibility for all citizens and not for some citizens.
“A president is a president of a country not of a party. He or she should
be capable of being a president even for those who did not vote for him or
her. We don’t seem to have that maturity,” Nkosana said.
He addeed that “my own view and conclusion is that for the time being, we
need to try the idea of citizens being persuaded to vote for somebody who
does not belong to a party”.
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