Published: 29 April 2019

Rifts continue to widen in the MDC-Alliance as the opposition party has been rocked by mistrust among senior party members, with eyebrows being raised over a mysterious advertisement that was flighted in the media last week ostensibly authored by secretary-general Mr Douglas Mwonzora.

The advert was a notice on the party's congress next month.

Members of the party have raised concern and anxiety over the irregular manner in which the advert found its way into one of the newspapers. The advert addressed to all provinces, districts and wards did not have a party logo, neither was it signed by Mr Mwonzora, who is said to be the author of the letter.

The advert came after Mr Mwonzora had withdrawn from the presidential race alleging widespread vote manipulation thereby creating an uneven playing field.

Last week, Mr Mwonzora complained about another letter which implicated several party officials in a slew of allegations. Although Mr Mwonzora declined to comment about the advert, sources in his camp said it was one of the letters thatdid  not originate from his office, thereby exposing the divisions in the party ahead of the congress.

"The letter certainly did not come from the secretary-general as clearly evidenced by a number of irregularities it has," said an MDC-A source.

"You will notice that it does not have a logo, yet the SG has his own logo, neither was it signed.

"The advert coincided with allegations Mr Mwonzora had raised that the playing field was not even and was compelled to withdraw from the presidential race."

Mr Mwonzora told journalists last week at a press conference that he had his own style of writing correspondence. He said he signed off correspondence that originated from his office and did not refer to himself by the title "Honourable" as was the case in the advert.

"Here, what we do is that we address correspondence to a particular office, the letter we have is unsigned, I always sign my letters, it describes me as Hon Douglas Mwonzora, I do not call myself that, but just Douglas Mwonzora, I describe myself on first name basis," he said.

"This is an attempt by whoever to sow seeds of divisions, whether this person is operating internally or operating from outside, this person is working for a system we did not agree with. I hope that all right-thinking members must dismiss this letter by whoever wants to score cheap political points."

When contacted, MDC-Alliance spokesperson Mr Jacob Mafume said the advert had been flighted by the party, but could not tell from which department.

"It was in compliance with the constitution," said Mr Mafume.
- the herald

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