Dear Derek Matyszak
I would like to thank you for your excellent article in Zimeye. Thank you.
I believe the issue of whether or not these elections were free, fair and credible is a very important one and one that must be addressed head on. I do not think you did this.
“Viewing elections through an urban lens can be highly misleading, as rural voters are often motivated by different considerations to those of their urban counterparts,” you wrote.
“Without ignoring the fact that Zanu-PF has considerable and ardent support among rural voters, it is clear that clientelism plays an important role.
“Many rural voters in Zimbabwe seem to view elections as an opportunity to show fealty to those in power rather than an exercise of democratic choice.
“Loyalty is rewarded in the form of food aid and free agricultural inputs.
“Backing the “wrong” candidate can attract harsh reprisals – an election “promise” ZANU-PF has a reputation for keeping.
“A rural voter then may make a pragmatic and carefully considered calculation as to who will win, and vote with head rather than heart.”
Are you saying that Zanu PF has the right to use the carrot and stick on the rural voters and the victims will still be counted as having made a democratic choice?
Why bother talking about free, fair and credible elections as a birth right when the reality to the rural voter is that this is a curse because 38 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF rule has left 75% of the population living in abject poverty. The rural folk are the poorest of the poor. How anyone can still pretend the rural voter would still support Zanu PF if they had a free choice beggars belief!
The rural people are the poorest, the least informed, the most exploited, the most oppressed, etc., etc. but do not ever make the mistake of thinking they are stupid. If a political environment was ever created in which they were allowed to cast a free vote confident they will never be punished if Zanu PF lost the elections you will be surprised how few rural voters will vote for Zanu PF.
These elections were not free, fair and credible in that the rural voters were bribed and worse still threatened. The right to free, fair and credible elections should not be enjoyed by the urban voters alone but the rural voters too!
“An opinion poll conducted just a month before the election by Afro Barometer gave Mnangagwa a slim lead,” you argued.
In a country where the rural voters constitution 70% of the electorate have no free vote opinion polls are totally meaningless.
These elections should have not taken place without first implement the democratic reforms designed to take away Zanu PF’s dictatorial powers, the carrot and the whip, the regime enjoys over the rural population. MDC leaders were supposed to have implemented the reforms during the GNU but failed to do so. Still this does not mean we should just give up and leave Zanu PF to continue to ride roughshod over the people especially the most disadvantaged and long suffering rural povo.
One of the greatest disappointments to come out of these 2018 elections is how many MDC politicians do not seem to know what constitute free, fair and credible elections. How anyone could anyone expect free and fair elections when ZEC failed to produce something as basic as a verified voters' roll? It turns out that more than 10 polling stations had more than 100% voter turnout and some even had more than 200%.
Of course, these elections were not free, fair and credible and must be condemned in the strongest terms.
Best regards
Patrick Guramatunhu.
@Zimpaper
ReplyDelete"Operation Restore Legacy led to the resignation of Robert Mugabe who had ruled the country for over three and a half decades. It ushered in a new political dispensation that has brought with it hope for a brighter future" you said.
Only a Zanu PF apologist would say such nonsense and lo behold the article was penned by "Zimpaper"!
Operation Restore Legacy was a military coup - forget all the nonsense of it being a military assisted transition, there was nothing new with transiting from a dictatorship to a dictatorship - an act of high treason and it is naïve to believe any good was ever going to come out of it, especially when those staging the coup were only doing so to seize absolute power for themselves.
If anyone was ever in any doubt that the coup removed the dictator Mugabe but left the Zanu PF dictatorship unchanged then the elections of 30 July 2018 and the events that followed have spelt it out loud and clear. Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by ruthless vote-rigging thugs.
Foreign investors and lenders have read the message and will shy away from Zimbabwe. Apologist can witter all they want about "a brighter future" but with none of the much needed foreign investment to kick start the country's comatose economy the future will remain grime!
Mugabe has dragged the nation into this hell-on-earth with his de facto one-party dictatorship. Instead of helping us end the dictatorship, operation restore legacy has plunged the nation even deeper into this hell by turning a covertly military dictatorship into an overtly and in your face military dictatorship. Half the cabinet after the coup was ex-military personal for Pete's sake who have taken off their military uniforms but kept their military rank just to remind us all who they are!
Some of foreign election observers are returning home. We are still awaiting their preliminary reports.
ReplyDeleteWhere these elections free, fair and credible?
The answer has to be a NO! How can the elections be free and fair when the authorities could not produce something as basic as a clean voters' roll. It has since emerged that no fewer than 10 polling stations had more that 100% voter turnout and some even had more than 200% voter turnout.
And yet we also know that many registered voters were denied the vote because they turned up at the wrong polling station. In 2013 nearly one million voters were denied the vote because they details were in the wrong constituency voters' roll. This time a lot more people were denied the vote since it was a polling station bases voting, one and half million voters at the very least.
So with 1.5 million out of the 5.6 registered voters, 26%, denied the vote how is it then possible that so many polling stations still had over 100% voter turnout?
Of course, these elections were rigged and anyone, especially from democratic nation, who says otherwise will be lying. I would want to see the individual say they would judge similar elections in their own country free, fair and credible if what they observed happen in Zimbabwe was repeated in their own country.
How can these elections be free, fair and credible when ZEC has failed to produce something as basic as a clean voters' roll?
ReplyDeleteNow it turns out that no fewer than 10 of the polling stations achieved the impossible feat of having more that 100% voter turnout! Some station even had more than 200%. This is even more shocking since at least 1.5 million voters were denied the vote because they turned up at the wrong polling station since voting was by polling station only.
The mistake MDC leaders made was to agree to go into these elections with no reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging. It beggars belief that anyone with half a brain would agree to go into an election with no voters' roll. And yet that is exactly what MDC leaders did!
Having foolishly agreed to contest in these flawed and illegal elections, MDC have their work cut out to prove the elections were rigged with no voters' roll, etc. Their case is based on ZEC failing to add the votes, by then most of the vote rigging was done and dusted!
Derek is right, our rural folk are not citizen with a free and democratic vote but they are nothing more that subjects in a feudal system whose vote is no more theirs than the land was the property of the tenant. We have all heard of stories of opposition supporters who have had their homes and property destroyed and booted out of the village or worse. Last week, the social media was awash with photographs of a burnt out shell of an opposition's homestead.
ReplyDeleteWhat is disappointing here is that people like Derek readily agree Zanu PF is running a modern day feudal system in which the rural voters are nothing more than serfs they, nonetheless pretend there can still be free, fair and credible elections under these dark-ages conditions. That is just nonsense!