Thread by @NewsHawksLive

Zimbabwean former minister and MP Jonathan Moyo says MDC-T leader Douglas Mwonzora can't use the name MDC Alliance that belongs to Nelson Chamisa's party as the pre-2018 elections pact which led to the MDC Alliance poll deal has expired. MDC Alliance only became a party in 2019.

Before 2019, there was no party called MDC Alliance, there was only an electoral pact called the MDC Alliance which expired soon after the 2018 elections.
The deal was only going to subsist after the elections if the coalition had won, but it automatically dissolved upon defeat.

So this means the electoral pact which Mwonzora is talking about is now non-existent. However, Chamisa's MDC Alliance party, formed in 2019, is there. Mwonzora doesn't belong to it.
Mwonzora is MDC-T President; can't be leader of two parties at the same time as he purports to be.

The MDC Alliance electoral pact - officially known as the Composite Political Cooperation Agreement - signed in 2017 by the Morgan Tsvangirai, Welshman Ncube, Tendai Biti, Jacob Ngarivhume, Agrippa Mutambara, Mathias Guchutu and Denford Musiyarira.
Mwonzora was not a signatory.

It enjoined parties involved to work together during the 2018 elections - led by Tsvangirai - and after the polls of the alliance won.
If it didn't the pact automatically expired. So as things stand the MDC Alliance electoral pact, which Mwonzora purports to lead, has expired.

When Tsvangirai died in February 2018 before elections, a fight erupted between his deputies, Thokozani Khupe, Chamisa and Elias Mudzuri. In the battle for succession, Chamisa seized control of MDC-T, although the elected Khupe had a more legitimate claim to be interim leader.

Two MDC-T factions emerged, one led by Chamisa and the other by Khupe.
Mwonzora went with Chamisa, although he always vowed that he will fight him after elections and remove him as party leader.
After the elections, Mwonzora went and others went to court and won in March 2020.

The court order an extraordinary congress of the MDC-T in 90 days, and Mwonzora defeated Khupe in a chaotic poll.
Chamisa did not contest as he had already moved on and formed MDC Alliance party after the expiry of the MDC Alliance electoral pact which Mwonzora still clings onto.

MDC Alliance became a party in parliament and every political sphere after its congress in 2019.
Even when Mwonzora and Khupe recalled MDC Alliance MPs,they argued that they were refusing to comply with MDC-T orders as they claimed that it was the signatory to the electoral pact.

If the MDC-T led by Mwonzora was the same as MDC Alliance there would have been no need to recall MDC Alliance MPs and replace them with MDC-T ones.
This also showed Mwonzora, as parliament did, appreciated that the two parties were different, one was his and the other Chamisa's.

"While we know and appreciate Mwonzora and his party have links with Zanu PF, State House and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, claiming the MDC Alliance name on the basis of an expired agreement is absurd," Moyo, also a political scientist, said. "Mwonzora is stretching it."

Moyo said even Mnangagwa or ZEC would find it irrational to claim that Mwonzora is leader of two political parties at the same time.
"It's inherently absurd and ZEC must dismiss Mwonzora after he wrote a letter to them on that issue. He is not the leader of the MDC Alliance.

"Mwonzora was never President of the MDC Alliance electoral pact because there was never such a position anyway; the coalition had a presidential election candidate, first it was Tsvangirai before his death and later Chamisa. Mwonzora was also never leader of MDC Alliance party."

Apart from what he told The NewsHawks, Moyo added in a series of tweets on the issue that Mwonzora has now been entangled in his own web of deception and chicanery. See the quoted tweets below:

"With respect Hon @DMwonzora, these days you're more familiar with @edmnangagwa's State House than any law; more so on political parties, MPs & Councillors about which you have been a beneficiary of ED's CHICANERY SINCE 31 MARCH 2020. God has seen it all, now you wait and see!

"Since 2018, no pre-election alliance agreement has been entered into by @OurMDCT with any party for 2022 by-elections or 2023 elections or any elections. The @OurMDCT cannot use an EXPIRED 2018 AGREEMENT, which was never renewed, for 2022 by-elections or 2023 elections. No!"