THE Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) is working on a template that will allow citizens to choose their 2023 council and parliamentary candidates without being dictated to by the political party.
This move was confirmed by CCC national deputy spokesperson Gift Ostallos Siziba, who stated that council and parliamentary candidates will not come as directives from party structures.
“We have resolved that we have a template currently being debated on by the relevant organs of the institution. There will be a consensus candidate selection process, which is going to allow ordinary people, who are the drivers and supporters of the movement, to be able to choose who will represent them. For us that is a non-negotiable process,” he said in an interview with the Breakfast Club hosted by CITE recently.
According to Siziba, CCC hopes that the 2023 election will produce public officials who reflect the spirit of the ordinary people.
“As CCC, we believe the communities must be able to express themselves. We have encouraged our people and I take this opportunity to encourage everyone within the movement to be a deployee of the party, to go to public office but let that be a reflection of the people,” he said.
If people express their dissatisfaction with a particular candidate, the party must respect that, according to the deputy spokesperson, noting CCC officials can have a say on other candidates deployed in the Senate or under Proportional Representation.
“That again is going to be based on your contribution to the national democratic project – to how you have committed yourself to voter registration, spreading the message of change, campaigning for the opposition and of course standing on behalf of the people,” he said.
Siziba stated CCC recognizes that if they go against the will of supporters, the party will face apathy, particularly in urban areas.
“We have had problems before,” noted the deputy spokesperson, which is why they want “the community to be able to express themselves because these are the people that are obviously going to cast the ballots.”
“If we believe that Ostallos doesn’t qualify and the party forces him, the people will be apathetic.”
He noted that imposing candidates would result in a vote mismatch, as seen in the opposition’s previous polls.
“There was a mismatch between presidential, council and MP votes yet in reality it must be the councillor who must get more votes as they are connected to people in the community. The councillor must be bringing votes to the organisation and to the president, not vice versa,” Siziba said.
“That mismatch can only be resolved if we make sure that we have a candidate coming out from the community.”
He also admitted that CCC had learnt its lesson when it fielded two candidates in the March 26 by-elections last year.
“One of the key lessons emphasized by the president (Nelson Chamisa) is our candidate selection process. We put it to test during the by-election and it helped us to see if it is a possible route or not and it had 96 to 97 percent efficacy. It only failed in Emganwini in Bulawayo and in Masvingo urban,” Siziba said.
“The lessons learnt against all odds is the party must be able against internal interests to take what is embraced by the people. Two, we learnt as a movement that we cannot have a lot of people as signatories because double candidates are born from different people signing for the other person.”
As a solution against double candidature, CCC will implement a centralised process to safeguard consensus.
“Once the independent body holds a consensus process and we have finalised, where the internal arbiter has also ruled that these are final candidates then those candidates will be signed for so that we don’t have double candidates. That’s one thing we are not going to tolerate in 2023,” Siziba said, adding CCC will make sure the party will “only have one single candidate in a constituency.”
The party will also embark on capacity building in order to deploy capable individuals.
“We have set the benchmark for people that are going to lead council, be a mayor, the deputy and chairperson of different committees and the same goes for parliamentary candidates,” said the deputy spokesperson.
“We are going to announce before the election and during our campaign that this is going to be your mayor, if we win.”
“This is to avoid people who come behind the scenes after we get into government because when you are there, there is a lot of happiness and chaos so people smuggle themselves into strategic positions of the organisation. That’s why we end up having people who are unable to serve. So, we are going to announce publicly who is going to be the mayor.”
