Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai last Friday decided to boycott "cabinet and ministerial meetings" because the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front has been dragging its feet in implementing the Global Political Agreement. It was frustrating his efforts to transform the country. This was a good decision.

Tsvangirai has been humiliated, prompting people to ask why he was enduring all this when he won last year's Parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections.

But he couldn't have chosen a worse time to pull out. The timing was wrong. Tsvangirai fell right into the ZANU-PF trap, that he is not the one calling the shots. He is taking cue from his Western benefactors.

It is not a question of whether this is true or not. It is a question of perceptions. How believable is such an assumption?
Tsvangirai made the assumption more believable because the entire Western world was up in arms on Thursday over the detention of Movement for Democratic Change treasurer, Roy Bennett.

Tsvangirai was right to call off the meetings set for Thursday. But it is not clear why he did not wait for Bennett to go to court on Friday because it was obvious that Bennett would be granted bail.

The assumption, right or wrong, was that Tsvangirai was under too much pressure to act. Where was this pressure coming from?

Obviously, it was not personal because Tsvangirai had gone through worse. The suspicious death of his wife was a classic example.

It could not have been from the party, because several legislators have been arrested and detained, including national chairman Thamsanqa Mahlangu who is on trial for stealing a "cheap" cellphone which a kid would not even pick up from a dustbin.

It was not from the people because national organising secretary Elias Mudzuri had just completed a tour of the country and the people had overwhelming voted that the MDC should not pull out of the inclusive government but should sort out things from within.

Pressure could therefore have come only from those who feel Tsvangirai has not gained from joining the inclusive government; those who have insisted that they will not give aid to Zimbabwe as long as President Robert Mugabe is part of the government.

Sadly, Tsvangirai's decision has rekindled debate on whether the MDC and the West really care about the average Zimbabwean or they have other interests. For the West it appears they are more interested in their kith and kin. Bluntly, this smacks of racism. The message seems to be: "You can detain and torture your black colleagues. But leave the whites alone."

The whole problem seems to stem from the fact that the MDC has never acted as the winning party. It has always acted the victim, not the victor. It has always whined that ZANU-PF is doing this, the military is doing this.

True, ZANU-PF is no easy push-over. It could just have thrown down the towel after last year's elections results. But it realised that the MDC leadership could easily crack. And it does.

Surely, there must be senior army officers that support the MDC. There must be senior police officer that support the MDC. Even if there are no senior army or police officers that support the MDC, what makes it think it has no support from the rank and file?

Tsvangirai has been behaving like a statesman and mature politician since he became Prime Minister. But like Mugabe, he is surrounded by too many vultures. For some, it pays for the inclusive government to collapse. Tsvangirai must therefore watch out who his true friends really are.