The MDC Renewal Team says it will not participate in any future elections without major reforms that are necessary to preclude voter fraud by Zanu PF.
“No reforms; no elections,” declared perceived party leader, Tendai Biti, at a meeting in Bulawayo on Sunday.
His stance appeared to seat well with the more than 400 party supporters who reciprocated the chant with animated vigor.
Biti said a free and fair vote was impossible under the status quo, charging that the system in place gives the ruling Zanu PF party unfair advantage over other political players.
The former finance minister in the 2009-2013 unity government also took aim at his erstwhile boss, Morgan Tsvangirai, saying he lacked the wherewithal to dislodge Zanu PF after losing three successive elections to President Robert Mugabe.
Biti also called on his lieutenants to work together in setting up structures across the country ahead of the party’s elective congress next year where a substantive national leadership will be picked.
“Let’s build our structures," Biti urged. "Let’s build our movement. And let’s not make the mistakes of our past of fishing in the same pond. Zimbabwe is huge; Zimbabwe is an ocean, let's fish people.
“The same votes we got in 2008, were the same votes we got in 2013 because we were fishing in the same pond.”
Addressing the same gathering, interim party chairman Sam Sipepa Nkomo, criticized both Tsvangirai and Mugabe, saying they have no solutions to the country's desperate and deepening economic crisis.