Former vice president and leader of the opposition National People’s Party (NPP) Joice Mujuru has called for opposition parties to be united, warning that the parties will be defeated if they challenged Zanu-PF individually. She also warned that this would result in funding challenges if the parties did not get at least 5 percent of the vote. According to ZEC 116 parties have registered to contest in the 2018 elections. Speaking at a party meeting, Mujuru said,
If we are to go to into the elections divided I can foresee serious challenges. Most political parties might fail to get funding from parliament after having failed to get the 5% mark because of small numbers.
We are having challenges in terms of resources mobilization because we are not in parliament.
If we are united we will not fail to garner the required 50+1 percent. If we operate in that manner we will have resources.
We respect the party’s autonomy so as not to drown individual party voices. We don’t want to have a situation whereby a party will be swallowed.
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