When the late Morgan Tsvangirai and then Nelson Chamisa decided to contest this year’s elections with not even one democratic reform in place, the nation’s fate was sealed there and then. Zanu PF was going to rig the vote and win the elections.
Last night ZEC chairperson, Justice Priscilla Chigumba, declared “Emmerson Dambudzo (ED) Mnangagwa duly elected President of the Republic of Zimbabwe!” It was just a formality fulfilling a predetermined result in which the voter registration, campaigning were all play-acting to give credibility to an otherwise flawed and illegal process.
ED and his junta won the elections with the predetermined 2/3 plus landslide majority.
What do we do now? Well that is the million dollar question every Zimbabwean with half a brain will be asking themselves now and for months and years to come.
The sham elections and the violence of these last few days have confirmed that Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by ruthless thugs. The thugs’ appetite for absolute power and the wealth and influence it brings is insatiable; 8 months ago the stage a military coup to wrestle power from one of their own and today they are celebrating having successfully rigged yet another elections.
Rigging elections is in President Mnangagwa and the junta’s blood as they are the ones Mugabe had relied on for all his 37 years in power!
The only thing in President Mnangagwa’s mind now is to consolidate his hold on power by purging all Mugabe loyalists and replacing them with his own loyalists. The country’s economic meltdown and the heart breaking suffering it is causing will be the last thing on ED’s mind.
The most serious consequence of these rigged elections is that President Mnangagwa has, ipso facto, just announce “Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by thugs!” No investor and lender is coming to invest in Zimbabwe because no one wants to do business with a thug!
Zimbabweans can kiss goodbye to any hope of meaningful economic recovery. Without the much needed foreign direct investment to kick start the barely functioning economy recovery is simply impossible. You do not pull yourself up by the bootstraps!
Zimbabwe is the poorest nation in Africa with 3/4 of the population living on US$1.00 a day. Let us just say, the number of those living in abject poverty is set to increase with those at the bottom sinking even deeper into the abyss!
What the people do now?
The people must appeal to the international community not to abandon them to this corrupt and tyrannical regime. These elections were rigged and the people must appeal to the world to say so and not sweep this under the carpet!
How can these elections be judged free, fair and credible elections when there was no free public media; there was no verified voters' roll; when Zanu PF robbed the nation blind to bankroll its vote-rigging and vote-buying schemes; etc.?
By declaring these elections null and void the international community will have deprive this junta the political legitimacy, the oxygen, and putting it under pressure to accept the need to implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections.
The international election observers MUST declare these elections null and void as a matter of principle, honesty, human dignity and, most important of all, to give the long suffering people of Zimbabwe HOPE. Hope born out of knowing that after 38 years of tyrannical rule someone is finally hearing their cry for help. Hope that this country will one day finally have its first ever free, fair and credible election.
With a concerted effort on the part of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe supported by the good will of the international community this regime of President Mnangagwa can be forced to step aside to allow an interim administration to take over because it is illegitimate.
People should not even waste time MDC’s court challenge of these elections; Chamisa and others were warned not to take part in these elections without reforms and they refused to listen. The Court that will hear the MDC appeal is the same Court that ruled last November’s military coup was legal! This is just a waste of time.
Plan B is to fight for the international election observers to at least acknowledge that these elections were not free, fair and credible and to make very specific recommendations of what must be done to ensure next elections are free and fair. The fight for free and fair elections must start now; not tomorrow or next year. No, today, now and every day until there are free and fair elections!
@ Joe Divanny
ReplyDelete“I wrote before the elections that Chamisa faced an unenviable choice: boycott the elections and risk consigning the MDC to the political scrapheap, or embrace the electoral process at the risk of conferring legitimacy on his opponent’s subsequent (and pre-ordained?) victory. The third option, of course, was to compete in the election but be ready immediately to condemn the outcome as illegitimate,” you said.
Well, if Chamisa listened to you, or he acted of his own convolution, what is clear is your advice was foolish and no wonder MDC fcuked big time! Participating in flawed and illegal elections one can see will be blatantly rigged is insane! Only a fool will urge that “boycotting will consign MDC to the scrapheap!”
What did MDC accomplish by participating in the flawed elections in 2013? Nothing, other than give the flawed process legitimacy and added another five years of corrupt and tyrannical rule to the people.
What has MDC accomplished by participating in this year’s elections? Once again, nothing! We are in this political mess with the country tittering on the brink right now all because of some fools who believed they could win rigged elections!
If you have nothing useful to say, shut-up!
With no verified voters' roll Zanu PF has denied real people the vote and allowed fictitious people to vote. "The fictitious people have spoken; the voice of the fictitious people is the voice of the fictitious God!" he should sys.
ReplyDeleteAll the work ED, his supporters and sponsors had done since the last November coup to promote the "new dispensation" has all been swept aside in the last month. There are those who wanted to believe Zanu PF had changed but the events of the blatant vote rigging and then the wanton violence to silence all the protestors and would-be protestors has shown that the Zanu PF party of thugs is very much alive and thriving.
The old dictator Mugabe is out of office but the Zanu PF dictatorship is still here under the same thugs or be it just shovelled! The same fictitious voters that kept Mugabe in power and now keeping Mnangagwa in power.
@ Jovo
ReplyDeleteAfter 38 years of this corrupt and tyrannical regime every day they remain in power will only be turn the knife in the wound, it is insane to allow them. No effort should ever be spaced to get this regime out of office yesterday!
@Thata
ReplyDelete"Chamisa was big-headed: he knew it all, apparently never listened to advice because he thought whatever advice came from himself. He lacked foresight, he lacked leadership qualities, his words were uncouth towards women's ears even some men," you said.
Madam, you have hit the nail on the head and driven it home in one blow!
If Chamisa was warned once he was warned 100 000 times and 100 000 times again that it was insane to go into these elections with no reforms but he and his fellow MDC leaders would not listen.
He had the chutzpah to publicly denounce the late MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai for agreeing to go into the 2013 elections with no verified voters' roll, as if he was not a senior member of MDC and therefore equally responsible for the foolish decision.
"I will not make the same stupid mistake!" boasted Chamisa. Guess what, that is exactly what he did. MDC has gone into this year's elections with no clean and verified voters' roll. So, Chamisa is so corrupt and incompetent he cannot listen to his own advice regardless how sound and logical it may be.
@ Tapson Zivavose
ReplyDelete"Stop blaming each other the enemy is still behind lets look foward for the way to win back our victory," you say.
That is nonsense!
If you do not have a NO-HOLDS-BARRED critique of the past then you will neither appreciate what you did right nor what you did wrong. So as Wilbert Mukori's law would have it; You are more likely to ditch those things you got right and repeat the mistake! If you do something right by accident you are not likely to repeat it. Doing the wrong thing is easy. Doing the right thing entails order and doing the wrong thing entails chaos. Growing a crop of maize demands effort growing weed does not!
MDC blundered by failing to implemented the reforms during the GNU. They blundered by going into the 2013 elections without even a voters' roll. They have blundered yet again by going into this year's elections with no reforms. How long are you going to sweep all this blundering from pillar to post and for what end and purpose!!!
I salute Nomazulu Thata for having the foresight and cut through all this political correctness gone mad and hold these corrupt and incompetent politicians to account! Thank you Nomazulu!
@ Don Chigumba
ReplyDelete"If you go through the total votes casted for MPs and Presidential candidates, you will observe a difference of above 100,000 ballots between them. What it means is that, Judge Chigumba manipulated more than 100,000 votes (definitely to favor ED). Out of all the provinces, Manicaland had a wider margin of above 48,000 ballots," you said.
This is just nonsense, you have not proven anything here!
You claim to have done the analysis then tell are the totals of the ballots cast for the parliamentary and presidential candidates as shown on the respective V11 and V23 forms posted outside each polling station different? Why have you not posted photographs of two such forms?
We are not interested in what might have happen but what happed supported by documentary evidence!