(NEWZIMBABWE) Moyo mocks Tsvangirai’s economy warning
26/01/2014 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter

OPPOSITION MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s damning assessment of the country’s economic prospects appears to have annoyed Information Minister Jonathan Moyo who has dismissed his speech as the "mutterings of a very disturbed man”.

Speaking in Lupane on the side-lines of a Zanu PF Matabeleland North provincial co-ordinating committee meeting, Moyo said Tsvangirai was not the president of Zimbabwe and could not, therefore, pretend to present a State of the Nation address.

“In the first place that was not a State of the Nation Address,” he said.

“A State of the Nation Address can only be given by the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces and you can only be a Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces by winning an election.

“In order to give an address of the kind you are talking about, you have to have the vote of the people of Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai tried to get it, it is public knowledge, on the 31st of July last year and he was resoundingly rejected by the people, so let’s put that aside.

“However, he has a right, like any Zimbabwean, to express his opinions; this is something which is enshrined in the Constitution. When one of the 13 million Zimbabweans chooses to exercise that right, the rest of us, especially you in the media, do not have to get carried away and overly excited as if there is something important going on.”

Tsvangirai warned that the country faced a tough 2014 as the economy continues to struggle, in part, because of the crisis of legitimacy arising from the July 31 elections whose outcome he disputes.

“2014 is going to be a tough year as evidenced by the economic paralysis. The national picture is saddening,” Tsvangirai said adding the $4.4 billion Budget presented in December would not take Zimbabwe anywhere.

“The budget is a huge fallacy with no meaningful resources to fund it,” he said.

But Moyo said the MDC-T leader was trying to divert attention from internal challenges to his leadership as well as scandals about his private life.

“You had a statement of what appears to be a very worried person and going by what we are reading in the newspapers,” said Moyo.

“He (Tsvangirai) is obviously worried about some bedroom issues; he is also worried about some succession issues around his leadership of his party which is now apparently very contested and he is seeking to address those issues using the wrong forum.

“You don’t invoke national issues, budget issues, as a way of attending to understandable bedroom problems and challenges within his party. So, I don’t think, as a matter fact, that anything that the leader of the embattled MDC said deserves the kind of attention that you are trying to give it.

“I think those were the mutterings of a very disturbed person who needs our sympathy, who needs our understanding and I think the majority of Zimbabweans sympathise with the difficulties that he is allegedly having in the bedroom.

“You wouldn’t, you know, want anyone to go through those kinds of problems, but I don’t think it’s the right thing for him to seek to address those problems by making all sorts of outrageous claims that have no basis in any reality.”