A member of the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), claiming to be the interim secretary general of the party, has recalled some Members of Parliament and councilors he says were imposed by the Nelson Chamisa leadership in the 2023 general elections.
Sengezo Tshabangu, who was a CCC cluster leader for Binga district in the run up to the polls, said all the recalled lawmakers, including Eric Gono, Pashor Sibanda and others, were not nominated by citizens in the grassroots selection process.
Tshabangu said, “I have the authority and the power that we recall people. We are restoring internal democracy because we realized that we had people picking individuals close to them as candidates. So, we are saying this must stop. We want to take this party back to its founding values in which this party was formed. On that basis, this is why we have taken this path that people who were elected, who were chosen by the people as their representatives to be given an opportunity to lead people. But under these circumstances we realized that we have people in parliament who were imposed, we have people in Senate who were imposed, and we have people in councils who were imposed.”
But CCC spokesperson, Ostallos Siziba, says Tshabangu is being used by the ruling party to sabotage the party.
Siziba said, "It came to our attention that there are letters circulating on the internet, purportedly coming from the Citizens Coalition for Change as led by Advocate Nelson Chamisa. We want to reject the so-called letters, they don’t belong to the CCC, we have not effected any recalls of our Councillors and MPs, all our deployees are continuing with their responsibilities, given to them by the people. The citizens movement has not done any recalls. The individuals who are impostors by Zanu-PF, are trying by all means to destabilize our objectives and agenda in parliament and of course effect a de facto one party state and majority in parliament."
Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Mudenda, said CCC should submit a report to the House of Assembly if the party is disputing the recalling of its MPs by Tshabangu.
This is not the first time that opposition lawmakers have been recalled from parliament as the MDC-T led by Douglas Mwonzora did to the same to some MPs, who were elected through the MDC Alliance.