The newly-formed Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) is crowdsourcing for its electoral campaigns.
This comes when the government last week disbursed ZW$150 million (about US$1.3 million at the official exchange rate) through the Political Parties Finance Act to ZANU PF and the MDC-T.
The CCC party led by Nelson Chamisa was formed last week after it dumped its previous name, MDC Alliance which it used in the 2018 elections after the rival MDC-T led by Douglas Mwonzora said it would use the name in the March 26 by-elections.
The Chamsa-led party says it is entitled to the money that was given to the MDC-T considering that the party won 88 National Assembly seats and 25 senate seats while MDC-T did not win a single seat.
The government is justifying the disbursement of the funds to MDC-T on a 2020 Supreme Court ruling on the MDC leadership crisis which ruled that Chamisa was not the MDC’s legitimate leader.
CCC treasurer-general David Coltart Sunday told NewsDay that the Chamisa-led party has no option but to raise funds through crowd-sourcing “to defend the people’s vote“.
Coltart, however, declined to divulge the exact figure that has been raised so far, saying that it was confidential information. The former Primary and Secondary Education Minister said:
The money is to finance preparations for the elections as the money that was supposed to be given to us since 2018 through the Political Parties (Finance) Act was illegally given to MDC-T.
This also comes after a crowdsourcing initiative to replace Chamisa’s vehicle raised US$122 050, as of Monday 31 January 2022, out of the targetted US$120 000.
More: NewsDay Zimbabwe
