MARTIN MAWAYA
GWERU-The Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) will this Wednesday converge to nominate a presidential candidate who will square off against President Mnangagwa in the forthcoming harmonized elections scheduled for mid-year.
In an interview with the Midweek Watch the interim national deputy Chairperson Sesel Zvidzai said the citizen centric selection approach offers an opportunity for citizens to choose a presidential candidate of their choice.
He said the process aims to provide people’s representatives as opposed to the production of party candidates, as the nominated citizens will go through strict vetting stages.
“The first milestone on Wednesday is the nomination of citizens of good standing as potential candidates. These are the people which citizens believe will put novel solutions on the table, people who will place citizens at the core once elected into office. The citizens caucuses will seat and nominate the presidential candidate, members of Parliament, Senators, provincial councils, Councilors and proportional representative members of the house of assembly.
“Those who are successfully nominated will then go through a vetting process that is the second stage. One tested for understanding what the CCC stands for, for certain integrity issues that are desired for CCC,” he said.
He said his party has put in place an independent selection committee of eminent people who have no direct interest to be elected but to deliver candidates fairly and with impeacable integrity.
Zvidzai added that once the nominations and vetting process are concluded, the aspiring candidates will be subjected to the wider citizenry consultation in churches, business community, labour and civic society.
He said policy debates as well as articulating governance issues are among attributes of the vetting process which will be used to narrow down the numbers to the winner.
The interim vice chairperson pointed out that once the process is concluded, “there is a reverse process where we take all these people back to citizens to explain what we went through to arrive at the final candidate. All nominated people will be informed of all the stages they may have fallen short”.
He said the party has put in place a grievances to handle any grievances and will prepare those who may have fallen short for the next opportunity by taking such champions through the Morgan Richard Tsvangirai school of ideology.
