TWO recent developments - namely the interim findings of an opinion survey by a right-wing American propaganda think-tank called Freedom House and Zanu PFs progressive amendments that have aligned the July 18 Copac draft constitution with the views of the people gathered during the Copac outreach programme contained in an unpublished National Report - have coincidentally combined to wreak untold havoc for the MDC formations in the GPA Government which now do not know whether they are coming or going.

The ensuing havoc that is there for all to see has been made worse by the fact that both developments have far-reaching electoral implications for the two embattled parties which have nothing to show for their presence in the GPA Government except for the self-aggrandisement of their leadership, some of whom have taken to primitive accumulation in three short years while others like Morgan Tsvangirai now have US$3 million houses and are selfishly planning to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the signing of the GPA on September 15 by indulging in a plush wedding to Zanu PF fiances at a time when civil servants and ordinary Zimbabweans they gave false promises in 2009 are struggling to make ends meet.

There are two key questions about this background that beg for interrogation. First, what exactly does the Freedom House survey seek to communicate and to whom? In other words, what really is the purpose of the survey at this juncture in the scheme of national and geopolitical things? This is an important question because as the proverbial saying goes about statistics, while surveys can be revealing, their problem is that they are like miniskirts in that they conceal the essential and most exciting part and therefore useless for that reason. So what is the Freedom House survey concealing while revealing the obvious?

Second, why are the MDC formations going mad over Zanu PFs progressive amendments of the July 18 Copac draft constitution whose demonstrable essence is to align the draft with the views of the people in accordance with Article VI of the GPA?

A lot has been written and said with all sorts of nuances about the preliminary findings of the Freedom House opinion survey entitled, Change and New Politics in Zimbabwe conducted between June 23 and July 7, 2012 involving a nationally representative of 1198 adult Zimbabweans. But the bottom line from the survey that has given Tsvangirai and his MDC sleepless nights is the following Freedom House finding: When asked who they would vote for if parliamentary elections were held tomorrow, 47 percent of respondents said they would not vote, or refused to indicate who they would vote for (up from 41 percent in 2010). Of the 53 percent who declared their preference, 20 percent said they would vote for MDC-T (down from 38 percent in 2010) and 31 percent Zanu PF (up from 17 percent in 2010).

Instructively, despite his recent outbursts of sophomoric militancy about non-issues that have made him sound like a frustrated student living in the past, Welshman Ncube and his MDC did not feature at all in these stakes despite the fact that this national survey was done between June 23 and July 7 this year at a time when Ncube has been driving around in a pathetic convoy ranting, raving and pretending to be a national leader contending for the presidency of the Republic of Zimbabwe when his party cannot hold multiple star rallies even in one province, in Matabeleland itself.

This important point will be examined further another day, but what should be noted for now - and this is the talking point of the moment - is that the interim findings of Freedom Houses survey show that the MDC-T has dramatically lost support since 2010 - two years after the last election in 2008 - while Zanu PF has sharply increased its support over the same period, with Welshman Ncube having nothing to show.

This has shocked the MDC-T and its pundits out of their wits. Their best but hollow spin has been to claim that Freedom House has done the survey at this juncture in order to wake up the MDC-T and to send Zanu PF to sleep before the forthcoming general election which is now around the corner. If this spin had been spun in 2010, it perhaps could have had foolish takers, but you dont have to be a rocket scientist to understand that theres no political party that needs to be awoken or sent to sleep during an election year. The proposition that the Freedom House survey, done between June 23 and 7 July, is intended to wake up the MDC-T while sending Zanu-PF to sleep is therefore utter and complete rubbish.

As such, there must be more to the saga than meets the eye. If Freedom House was an independent think-tank which does research for its own sake, then there would be no need to split hairs about whats going on here. Indeed, if that were the case, the MDC-T would not be losing its empty head and going mad over the matter. The reason why all hell has broken loose is that Freedom House is not a think-tank but a propaganda tank which, along with the International Republican Institute, has been at the forefront of building the capacity of Morgan Tsvangirais MDC as a direct component of Americas so-called Zimbabwe Democracy Act (Zidera) to seek illegal regime change in Zimbabwe.

In other words, and there is a lot of public evidence out there to support this, Freedom House has been one of a few but critical instruments of choice to effect regime change in the country. In the run-up to the 2008 harmonised elections, Freedom House combined forces with the International Republican Institute under the tutelage of the likes of the infamous Melinda Ferris of the CIA to hold training seminars and workshops on electioneering, mainly in South Africa, for the MDC-T and its associated NGOs and developed the campaign strategy and even messages including designing and producing campaign jingles for Tsvangirais party.

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Unmasking Freedom House survey