The ManicaPost
John Sigauke Post Correspondent—
FOLLOWING a devastating and unexpected defeat of Mrs Hillary Clinton by the Republican candidate, Mr Donald Trump, the Democrats, whom the former was representing, have been placing blame on everything.
| The scapegoats range from fake news, racism, Russia’s alleged hack of her campaign, FBI, young voters, women and Electoral College among others. This type of blame game over electoral loss has been played out in Zimbabwe since 2000 when the United States initiated the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe. |
As they say ‘like father like son,’ the MDC-T has indeed lived up to this idiom. They politically behave like their masters or are they creators. During the run-up to the US’ November 2016 Presidential election, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC-T, openly declared his unwavering support for the Democratic candidate, Mrs Clinton.
Morgan Tsvangirai
Mr Tsvangirai said he supported the Democrats because he was also a democrat. Only God knows whether it is true. However, the point is that Mr Tsvangirai exposed his makers. He had no regret in doing so because in his mind he was quite convinced that the Democrats would retain power.
Of course he can be forgiven for that, for the election was seemingly tilted in favour of Mrs Clinton. Poll opinions had predicted as such and even Mr Trump himself was surprised by his victory. That is the deceptive nature of the political environment.
Although Mrs Clinton conceded defeat and encouraged her supporters to give Mr Trump a chance, she and her party later failed to live with the reality. They have been all along hunting for scapegoats so that they can sanitise their humiliating defeat.
Some of the identified or imagined scapegoats have severed diplomatic ties with Russia which is being accused of hacking Mrs Clinton’s election campaign. Mrs Clinton thinks that Russia’s alleged hack of her campaign was an attack to undermine their democracy. She alleges that the hacking was ordered by the Russian President himself, President Vladmir Putin to settle a certain personal beef against her.
The US outgoing president Mr Barack Obama is very convinced that President Putin contributed chiefly to Mrs Clinton’s loss. Thus, he expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the US as a show of anger.
Barack Obama
However, President Putin did not retaliate as permitted by the tit-for-tat diplomatic principle. He assured the US diplomats, who were by then enjoying Christmas holiday in Russia that he would not declare anyone persona non grata. President Putin exhibited maturity that lacks in Mr Obama.
The US intelligence has not up to now produced specific evidence to support the claims of the Democrats.
President Putin himself said: “The Democratic Party lost not only the Presidential elections, but elections in the Senate and Congress. Is that also my work?”
This is exactly what the MDC-T does in Zimbabwe. Even when the victory is as clear as the nose of their faces, the MDC-T would still dispute. The only election that is fair to them is the one which is in their favour.
But Mrs Clinton should not have been surprised by Mr Trump victory because she saw the potential of the business mogul way back in 2013.
In her speech then, Mrs Clinton said: “Donald Trump would be very successful if he were to venture into politics. He has single-handedly helped stop recession…Donald Trump is someone I could very easily see winning. I think he respects women and treats them as equal.
“…And I think that goes especially for Donald Trump, whose successful projects and business ventures have made him synonymous with big business projects and, more importantly, creating thousands of jobs. I also think he understands the philanthropic and charitable side of things quite well, which is a crucial skill for any politician.”
Before the hacking scapegoat, the Democrats had placed blame on FBI director, Mr James Comey for the electoral loss. During a post-mortem of the election Mrs Clinton’s campaign manager, Mr John Podesta blamed Mr Comey who had written a letter to Congress two weeks before elections informing lawmakers of a new batch of emails related to investigation of Mrs Clinton on the use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.
The Democrats had also blamed the young voters and women for Mrs Clinton’s loss. The former were accused of voting for a third party candidate, while the later were scorned for not supporting a fellow woman. The Democrats actually labelled the women “self-hating white women who failed to see the unity of female identity.”
The voting system was also blamed so were the electoral college, racism, news media and even Mrs Clinton’s long time aide, Huma Abedin. Unfortunately the Democrats failed to see Mrs Clinton’s many scandals as the unilateral reasons for her crushing defeat. Her own campaign misfired.
A blogger and columnist for The American Spectator, Emily Zanotti, noted: “Her (Mrs Clinton) focus on attacking Trump rather than providing a clear, positive picture of a Hilary Clinton presidency turned off voters nationwide.”
We have seen the MDC-T employing the same here in Zimbabwe. They concentrate on attacking the incumbent President Mugabe without proffering alternative policies of governance.
People are tired of the “Mugabe must go” mantra. The MDC-T must not be surprised when people refuse to invest their votes in them. They must not blame anyone for their perennial defeat. They are the single largest factor responsible for their loss. They must stop seeing shadows whenever they are defeated. Already they are creating a scapegoat for 2018 elections which they allege Zanu-PF is plotting to rig. Hopefully they have learnt from their masters that blame game will never help them in any way.
