“Zimbabweans we need your help to finish the struggle. We still need your hand in feeding our polling agents. Donate $5 and adopt one election agent. We have a total of 45 000 elections agents throughout the country.” Twittered MDC-T deputy treasury
general Mr Chalton Hwende.
And MDC is competing against Zanu PF, the party
that has so much money it has bought each and every one of its 210 MP candidates,
89 Senator candidates, each provincial chairperson of the party’s Youth, Women
and main wings in all 10 provinces plus a whole army of other party officials
other key individuals brand new motor vehicles. The party is spending millions
of dollars more on a multitude of its vote-rigging schemes including millions
paid to NIKUV, the Israeli vote rigging specialists, many PR companies chaining
out articles praising ED as the greatest leader the world has ever seen, etc.
Zanu PF is so loaded, it the 2013 elections,
the party gave each party MP and Senate candidate $10 000 spending money plus
all the campaign materials. The party, not the candidate, paid all the Zanu PF
election agents generous allowances.
If every dollars in cash and kind Zanu PF has
spent on keeping the party in power at all cost in the last five years was
added up is will be over $ 4 billion, ease! The MDC and all the other
opposition parties, all 130 of them, would count themselves very rich if they
have spent $4 million in the same period!
Zanu PF is out spending all its competitors $4
billion to $4 million or 1 000 to 1!
The disparity in political party funding alone
is so vast it is impossible to see how these elections can ever be judge fair! What
has turned this political party funding business from a hard to swallow hot
potato to one deadly to swallow because it is laced with deadly poison is where
Zanu PF is getting most of its billions of dollars.
It is no secret that Zanu PF is getting
billions of dollars to bankroll its vote-ring and vote-buying party activities from
state coffers and the wholesale looting going on in Marange and Chiadzwa
diamond fields. Most of the country’s basic services such as supply of clean running
water, education and health care have all but collapsed because of decades of
poor funding. Most provincial hospitals do not have a reliable ambulance
service (the situation is a lot worse in their satellite hospitals and clinics),
for example.
So, this Zanu PF government has no money to buy
just one ambulance to meet the needs of 1.5 million people in each province but
has cash to buy a comparable vehicle for each of the 28 Zanu PF MP and Senate
candidates, 28 chiefs and 10 Zanu PF leaders. Zanu PF is robbing the ordinary
people blind to finance it vote rigging activities so it can stay in power and
continue robbing the nation blind. I cannot think of anything more nauseating
than that!
The MDC dragged the nation into these flawed
elections, with no reforms in place, on the promise that the party “has
stringent measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections,” as Nelson Chamisa has
often claimed. As we can see none of the stringent measures have done anything
to stop Zanu PF robbing the nation blind! How can this be a fair contest when
one candidate is out spending the competition 1 000 to 1?
Zanu PF is robbing the people of Zimbabwe blind
to pay for its devilish schemes to deny the people the vote so it can continue
robbing them blind!
Enough is enough! We must stop this madness of holding
utterly meaningless elections!
These elections should not have taken place
without first implementing the democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF looting
the nation’s resources and using the ill-gotten proceeds to rig elections.
Whilst there is nothing anyone can do to stop
these 30 July 2018 elections going ahead, it is too late for that. What we can
do make sure it is clear that we do not approve of these elections, never did,
and we want the whole charade declared null and void.
We want the nation to revisit the raft of
democratic reforms agreed on the onset of the 2008 GNU and make sure that, this
time, all the reforms are implemented.
Do not both trying to vote on Monday because
Zanu PF has already won these elections given all the electoral advantages Zanu
PF; the many vote rigging opportunity because there is no verified voters’
roll, the disproportionate funding, etc. Zanu PF has won these elections long
before the first ballot was cast.
By participating in Monday voting people will not
change the predetermined Zanu PF landslide victory, they will give the process
credibility. They will be thanking Zanu PF for robbing them blind and denying
them the vote!
“We have conducted our elections in accordance with Sadc guidelines, but for us to deliver a free and fair poll, we will need parties to behave. Even with the best referee, as long as the players are bent on disrupting the process, it would be difficult for anyone to deliver,” said Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Acting Chief Elections Officer Utoile Silaigwana.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing one could say about the Professor Walter Kamba’s Election Commission, the pre-runner of this ZEC, is that none of the commissioners ever told a blatant lie, as far I know. Yes, of course, Kamba knew that Registrar General, Tobaiwa Mudede whose office carried out all the day to day running of the elections was messing the voters’ roll in favour of Zanu PF. The commissioners worked on the principle “If you do not want to have to lie about something then do not ask!” The new ZEC is now responsible for the day to day running of the elections and the commission is responsible for delivering free, fair and credible elections!
Of course, commissioner Utoile Silaigwana knows that ZEC has failed to release a verified voters’ roll a month before the 14 June nomination day and has still not done so to this day, 3 days before voting starts! How can these elections be free, fair and credible when there is no credible and verified voters’ roll? He is lying that these elections are free, fair and credible.
The one thing Robert Mugabe, and his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa, will always boast about is the ease with which he has found Zimbabweans to do his dirty bidding. The tyrant bribed the late Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends with the trappings of high office; ministerial limos, generous salaries, a former white-owned farm for Welshman Ncube, a $4 million mansion for Tsvangirai, etc. And, in return, the MDC leaders not only throw the reforms out of the window for five years of the GNU but were tripping over each other to sing Mugabe’s praise.
“President Mugabe is the fountain of wisdom, he is unflappable and father of the nation!” sang out Tendai Biti. The same tyrant was robbing the nation blind and his hands was dripping with the blood of the over 30 000 he murdered to establish and retain his de facto one party dictatorship!
Commissioner Utoile Silaigwana is lying through his teeth just like the other ZEC members in the time honoured Zimbabwe tradition of Judas Iscariot! The curse for Zimbabwe is that we have more than our fair share of sell-outs and it is no wonder the nation is in a real mess!
How many seas of red of MDC supporters attending party rallies did we see in 2013? Zanu PF bussed in its supporters from far and wide bribing the hired crowd with food hand-outs and other goodies and yet only managed to attract a small crowd compared to the MDC crowd. And yet come voting-day it was a Zanu PF landslide victory. The mistake people that year made was an obvious one – they assumed the elections were going to be free, fair and credible. They were not!
ReplyDeleteZanu PF saw to it that nearly one million, mainly MDC supporters were denied the vote by the simple act of making sure they were not in the constituency voters’ roll they expected. Meanwhile, the party allowed its own supporters to cast multiple votes in the many polling stations that had mushroomed just before voting day. Two days before voting day the number of polling stations had increased from 2 000 to 9 000! It was impossible to uncover any of these vote rigging schemes with no verified voters’ roll, the party saw to it that none was ever released.
Zanu PF is rigging this year’s elections using roughly the same dirty tactics as in 2013.
Those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat the same mistake over and over again ad nauseam! By high noon in 2013 MDC leaders and their supporters were speechless as the scale of the Zanu PF vote rigging finally sunk in, this is going to happen again on Monday!
@Faith Hope
ReplyDelete"The most recent high quality poll, by international research group AfroBarometer, shows ED with a small but clear lead over Chamisa. Most crucially, it shows that up to 20% of Zimbabweans are yet to make up their mind on who to vote for," you said.
Well I challenge that statement that AfroBarometer are capable of producing a "high quality poll" in Zimbabwe! Zimbabwe elections are NOT free, fair and credible and from the 2013 elections we know that nearly one million voters were denied the vote because they discovered on voting day that their names were not in the constituency voters' roll. We also saw man Zanu PF youths being bussed from one polling stations to the next casting multiple votes. These blatant vote rigging activities would not have happened if ZEC has released the voters' roll as is required by law.
ZEC has once again refused to release a verified voters' roll and it is obvious Zanu PF is going to use the same or similar vote rigging dirty tricks again this year.
As far as I can see AfroBarometer have no advance knowledge on how many ordinary Zimbabweans will be denied the vote or how many multiple votes will cast by Zanu PF youths. So how can their poll results be "high quality" when it does not allow for the segments with the greatest bearing of the outcome.
AfroBarometer assume that the elections are free, fair and credible which is nonsense because they are not!
It is bad enough that one should be corrupt and incompetent but when being so is detrimental to one's own interests that one's gains, real or imaginary, are absolutely nothing compared to loses being corrupt and incompetent becomes a curse!
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe is in this economic and political mess because Robert Mugabe and his corrupt and incompetent thugs. They turned a nation that was one of the top five richest nation in Africa in 1980 and set to become the South Korea of Africa into the poorest nation in Africa in three decades. Whilst Mugabe himself and a handful of his cronies have become filthy rich this was at the expense of the overwhelming majority, including many of Mugabe's own cronies and comrades, from whom the marrow of life has be suck out.
Many of Mugabe's cronies languishing in abject poverty today where themselves rich and powerful yesterday. This is a fate Mugabe and the rest still rich are fearful of and the yawning chasm between them and the poor majority makes them stick out like a sore thumb. They know they looted the wealth and hanging on to looted wealth is an impossible task when those from whom you looted are reminded of what you did every hour of every day.
Many of Mugabe and his cronies who are still rich and powerful today know that their power and wealth is ebbing away like a pool of water.
Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends sold-out during the GNU by failing to implement the democratic reforms. They thought that they had made it, they were members of Zimbabwe's exclusive rich and powerful ruling elite for life. They did not want to implement any democratic reforms since, as members of the ruling elite, it was them who benefited from the undemocratic practices.
Morgan Tsvangirai and many of his MDC friends were really surprised when they finally realised that Mugabe had rigged the elections in such a way as boot him and most of his friends out of power. Tsvangirai was lucky to be allowed to hang on to the $4 million Highland mansion Mugabe gave him as part of the thirty pieces of silver. His was a pitiful existence of how to live in $4 million mansion on zero income!
MDC leaders stood to gain the most from demanding the implementation of the reforms before holding the elections but being a cursed lot, they are the ones who have been frustrating those making such demands! MDC have lost these elections already and what will happen on Monday is the formalities of the KO count out!