The newly formed political party, LEAD, president Linda Masarira said her party is eyeing the Lupane East national assembly seat in the upcoming by election.
Masarira said her party has decided, pursuant to their recently unveiled strategic plan, to take part in the Lupane East house of Assembly and Bubi Ward 22 by-elections.
“As we speak our candidates are already on the ZEC records of the candidates contesting the two by-elections on the 3rd of August 2019. President Linda Masarira-Kaingidza will be taking time off from her busy schedule and camp in Matabeleland North to lead the campaign process.
“We enter this plebiscite with an underdog tag and cognisant of the fact that election campaigning has moved through a series of phases, prompted largely by the changing media landscape and the decline of strong social class-based loyalties to parties,” she said.
Masarira said partisanship remains a powerful influence on political behaviour within the Zimbabwean democracy in which a social identity involves a subjective sense of belonging to a group, which is internalized to varying degrees, resulting in individual differences in identity strength, a desire to positively distinguish the group from others, and the development of in-group bias.
She also said that they are entering this election very much aware of the niches of both Zanu pf and MDC and that as a new political party, they are also aware of the political dialectics obtaining in the said communities and are going to tread carefully but resolutely to wedge between the crevices within the status quo.
Masarira promised that her party will meet the needs of the Lupane East and Bubi Ward 22, walk into the ‘messy field of politics selling their vote. They will be met by political wolves who care less about them and do not give a damn to their voting right. These people are pushed by the need for political and monitory power.’
“Unless LEAD offers something in place that keeps these people under control then the will of the masses is doomed. That something is sound political ideology.
“An ideology that speaks into the aspirations of the masses and carries connotations of the generational mandate bestowed on obtaining generations. LEAD offers an ideology informed by the 2013 constitution of the people which summarizes the working parameter of any political player and give governance standards and outlines the overall Zimbabwean national vision,” said LEAD president.
She said LEAD enters the Zimbabwean political arena with a strong conviction that the society needs to move closer to the system known as “social democracy.”
