"Chamisa won 61%!" claimed Biti, if ZEC differs then Court must decide who is lying W Mukori

Talk of shooting oneself in the foot before a race, this is becoming a Tendai Biti specialty. In 2008 he is the one who jumped the gun and announced that Morgan Tsvangirai had won 60% of the March vote after ZEC had failed to do so timeously. A few days later Biti revised downward Tsvangirai’s win to 55% or so . Of course, MDC lost credibility; big time!

The people had no choice but to wait for ZEC’s official announcement. It took six weeks for ZEC to finally announce the result dropping Tsvangirai’s win to 47% - not enough to avoid the run-off.  MDC did not challenge the ZEC result leaving people to concluded that Tendai Biti’s call was guess work!

This year ZEC has once again been dragging its feet in announcing the results. And Tendai Biti has once again jumped the gun and announced the results.

"Our data shows we have won by 61%; Nelson Chamisa has won 61% of the votes!” said Tendai Biti.

“If you win by this much in the presidential elections - for instance in Masvingo (province) where Chamisa won overwhelmingly but hardly won any parliamentary seats - something is wrong. People don't vote for a presidential candidate of one party and not for the MPs of that party. So it's called cheating."

Here we go again! He is announcing the result but is not sure of his own figures!

Mr Tendai Biti have you collected all the vote counts from all the polling stations, added them up, cross checked every figure so you are 100% sure Chamisa has won 61% of the votes?

It should be easy enough to 100% certain since each polling station was require by law to count the vote of all the candidates and post the result on a V11 form for all to see.

Why has Tendai Biti failed to give just one example, just one, of a parliamentary candidate who, by Biti’s calculation, got Y votes and yet ZEC’s announced result got X votes. This would give the public something to sink their teeth into instead of all this nonsense of MDC claiming ZEC is rigging the vote but no one can tell how!

There are reports that as many as 21% of the polling stations did not post the results of the vote count as is required by law. If this was indeed the case then why is MDC failing to just one such polling station? Again, give the public something to sink their teeth into.

“MDC has stringent measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections!” MDC has often claimed.

Well their measures did not include forcing ZEC to produce a clean and verified voters’ roll; forcing Zanu PF to stop robbing the nation blind to bankroll its vote-rigging and vote-buying scheme; etc. Stopping ZEC cooking up the figures during counting is important but it is not the only way to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. In this case it may well turn out to be too little too late.

“Derek Matyszak, a Zimbabwe expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, differed with Biti, suggesting, as other analysts have, that Zanu-PF had already won before the first vote was cast,” reported one of South Africa’s leading paper, Daily Maverick

"The votes in the ballot box probably match those announced," said Matyszak.

There is merit in what Derek is saying.

Tendai Biti and his MDC Alliance friends should have never agreed to take part in these elections without a clean and verified voters’ roll, no transparent political funding system, etc. How can you have free, fair and credible elections when many all those entitled to vote are denied the vote; you do know who is on the voters’ roll; you do not know how many are on the voters’ roll but are denied the vote; etc.?

If Chamisa does not win the presidential vote then, out of respect of the public at least, MDC must challenge the result so Tendai Biti can show the world where he got his 61% and where ZEC got their losing figure.