Source: ‘MDC, opposition lose electorate’s trust’ – DailyNews Live
Mugove Tafirenyika 24 February 2017
HARARE – The Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC and other opposition political
parties have lost the electorate’s trust in recent years, a leading
think-tank – Afrobarometer – has claimed.
The research firm’s assistant project manager for southern Africa,
Rorisang Lekalake, said a survey, which involved 9 500 interviews in
Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa (SA) and Zimbabwe, revealed
this.
The survey found widespread support for multi-party politics in countries
such as Zimbabwe and others where sitting presidents have lost some
electoral support in recent years, but opposition support has not been
high enough to unseat them.
” . . . in Zimbabwe trust in the political opposition declined sharply
after 2008-2009 and similarly, the proportion of Zimbabweans who said they
felt `close to’ an opposition party dropped from 45 percent in 2009 to 19
percent in 2014,” Lekalake said.
This dramatic reversal of fortune, Afrobarometer concluded, provides an
important lesson for opposition parties like the MDC, which it said was
unable to leverage its role in stabilising the country when it was part of
the Government of National Unity (GNU).
Lekalake said trust in ruling parties stood at 46 percent while it was
lower at 35 percent for opposition parties.
However, this was an improvement in the situation more than a decade
earlier when trust levels in opposition parties was much lower.
The survey showed that in countries such as Namibia and Mozambique, levels
of trust in opposition parties are at the highest levels ever.
The survey also revealed that there was a lopsided distribution of power
and resources for opposition parties in countries with dominant governing
parties than for those in competitive party systems such as Botswana.
Similarly, in SA, the opposition’s strong showing in the 2016 local
elections has bolstered its optimism about its prospects in the 2019
national and provincial polls.
“This success suggests that confidence in the political opposition may
have grown since the 2015,” the Afrobarometer said.
But public dissatisfaction with government performance doesn’t necessarily
translate into perceptions that opposition parties could do a better job,
Lekalake said.
This is particularly so in SA and Zimbabwe.
While eight in 10 citizens in the two countries report poor government
performance on their top policy priority, only 37 percent say that another
political party could solve the problem.
COMMENTS