2018 Elections: Mugabe to order Mangudya’s RBZ to print more bond notes to buy new cars
Charles Mabhena
The highly suspected rumour that bond notes were to be used by President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU PF party in Zimbabwe to fund election rigging is now slowly turning to be true.
The party has just acquired 365 state of the art vehicles with sophisticated tracking system for the party officials’ errands before, during and after the elections.
The move came high on the heels that the Finance Minister has presented a shoddy national budget highly underpinned on the ever rising government expenditure. Of note is that though the budget’s huge deficit was because of the government’s wage expenditure bill, most civil servants notably teachers are to get their pay after Christmas, meaning they will spend the holiday on empty purses.
Analysts have already queried the source of the funds to be used to pay for the vehicles under such a shoe string budget. The government is currently failing to pay its workers.
A political analyst Elder Mabhunu once told this paper that the bond notes were being introduced so that ZANU PF could fund its vote rigging activities; he seems to have been exonerated in his premonition.
“As I rightly guessed before it is now coming out clear that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)governor John Mangudya would be summoned by Mugabe soon and be ordered to print more bond notes, the only way possible to finance the cars purchasing,” he tells zwnews.com over the phone this morning.
Mabhunu says while some may dismiss that government funds have nothing to do with party funding, this is true in real terms, but as for ZANU PF party has a track record of dipping its fingers in the state’s coffers to fund its activities.
ZANU PF has always put it clear that they would use state funds to finance their party activities. Party National Political Commissar Saviour Kasukuwere once told a rally prior to the Norton by-elections that if foreign governments can fund opposition parties to dislodge ZANU PF, the ruling party would therefore use state resources to fund itself and its leader.
“We will use state funds to defend our party and President,” he said then.
As if that was not enough, Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko once also echoed the same sentiments to the effect that no one would be arrested for misappropriation of funds if the abused funds can be proven to have had been used for party activities.
To add to the drama Jonathan Moyo during his arrest for abusing ZimDef funds tried to defend himself that he used part of the money to fund party activities, because he knew that in their vocabulary if one uses state funds to pay ZANU PF activities he is considered not guilty.
