For free and fair elections we need to implement all GPA reforms and stop wasting time of NERA. by Wilbert Mukori

Tsvangirai is presenting National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) as if it was a viable alternative route to ensuring the next elections are free, fair and credible. The truth is NERA will never stop Zanu PF rigging the next elections because instead of dealing with the real big issues behind the vote rigging it pretends they are not there in much the same way a toddle thinks closing its eyes makes everyone disappears . Rigging elections is a serious national problem and we need a serious solution.  

 

To understand why NERA is a false choice one has to go back to Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections, the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA), the 2009 to 2013 Government of Nation Unity (GNU) and the July 2013 elections.

 

Ever since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980 the country has failed to hold free, fair and credible elections; even the first elections in 1980, although they were held under the British supervision, were not free and fair. The people knew that if Mugabe and Zanu PF fail to win the elections the civil war would continue and so they voted Zanu PF to end the civil war. If anyone has ever doubted the sincerity of Mugabe’s threat then all such doubt evaporated in 2008 when Mugabe showed the whole world the murderous lengths he would do to retain power.

 

Mugabe lost the March 2008 presidential vote to his challenger Morgan Tsvangirai; but he withheld announcing the result for five weeks, when he finally did Tsvangirai’s lead had dwindled to well below the minimum to avoid a run-off. Mugabe pulled all the dirty tricks to ensure he won the run-off.

 

Zimbabwe had always known violence and vote rigging but the 2008 presidential run-off was to see some of the worst ever. Mugabe “declared war!” on the people, as Tsvangirai rightly pointed out, when he launched his operation “Mavhotera papi!” (Whom did you vote for!). Party operatives backed by the Army, Police and CIO set out to punish the people for having voting for Tsvangirai in the March vote and thus make sure they voted for Mugabe in the run-off. Millions of people were harassed, beaten and/or raped and over 500 were murdered.

 

The wanton violence was so bad that Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw from the run-off. Mugabe claimed victory to his one-horse race. But no one, not even the SADC and AU election observers known for turning a blind eye to election irregularities, would endorse the election as having been free, fair and credible. Mugabe faced a serious legitimacy issue; there was no way his regime could survive shunned by the whole world including his fellow African neighbours.

 

To regain legitimacy, Mugabe was forced to sign the 2008 GPA in which he agreed that Zimbabwe would implement a raft of democratic reforms and pass a new democratic constitution so that the wanton violence of 2008 and vote rigging of the past elections would not be repeated ever again. The three Zimbabwean political parties in the GNU, Zanu PF and the two MDC factions, were tasked to implement the reforms, write the new constitution and deliver free, fair and credible elections.

 

Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends made their first big mistake. Instead of implementing the democratic reforms as stipulated in the 2008 GPA, they allowed themselves to be bribed by Mugabe in retain for them kicking the reforms into the tall grass. Tsvangirai et al concentrated on drafting the new constitution convinced it alone would deliver the free, fair and credible elections.

 

 

 

 

The July 2013 elections were rigged thus proving right those who had warned MDC well before the elections that the March 2013 constitution was a false choice because it would NOT deliver free and fair elections.

 

The democratic reforms agreed in the GPA were designed to end Mugabe’s dictatorial struggle on key institutions like the Police, Judiciary, Public Media, ZEC, etc. which made these institutions behave more like party departments in all but name. The reforms were designed to redefine their core business, ensure their operational independence and to restore the democratic checks and balances between the executive, legislature and judiciary.

 

There was no political will to any of the reforms and so not even one reform was implemented in the five years of the GNU but worse still MDC allowed Mugabe to bamboozle them into accepting a new constitution endorsing Mugabe’s undemocratic powers over the Police, Judiciary, etc. The new constitution was a tyrant’s creed and not the democratic constitution the GPA had asked for. Tsvangirai claim the new constitution was an “MDC child” but truth was that it was Mugabe who “dictated” it, as Paul Mangwana said, the Zanu PF co-chairperson on the committee tasked to write the new constitution.

 

Since the rigged July 2013 elections MDC should have just acknowledged they made a serious mistake by failing to implement the reforms and compounded that by accepting a weak and feeble constitution. The solution is clearly to go back to the GPA and this time get ALL the reforms finally implemented. But in typical corrupt and incompetent MDC style, they are now pushing for, NERA, electoral law reforms design to realign the existing laws to the new constitution which we already know is weak and feeble.

 

Tsvangirai is making a mountain out of mole hill of the fact it is still the Registrar General who is producing the voters roll and not ZEC as required by the new constitution for example. With no reforms implemented it means ZEC, like all the other institutions like the Police, is still firmly in Mugabe’s pocket. Surely the key issue here is getting ZEC out of Mugabe’s pocket, what ZEC is doing whilst it remains in the tyrant’s pocket is a matter of indifference!  

 

In their report in October 2015, Veritas, a local think thank on legal matters, has studied all the electoral laws MDC-T is asking to be realigned with the new constitution and said they are all “inadequate and/or incomplete” to made an difference of the key issue of delivering free, fair and credible elections.

 

Tsvangirai and his MDC friends were warned repeatedly throughout the GNU years to implement the GPA reforms because the new constitution alone would not deliver the free and fair elections but they would not listen. Now they are at it again by insisting on NERA although it is clear that would not deliver free elections. Tsvangirai just likes to be seen to be doing something whether or not that is producing the desire goal is clearly irrelevant to him.

 

Mugabe too is guilty of indulging himself in false choices design to give the impression he is doing something to end the country’s worsening economic situation although in reality he is making the situation worse not better. Mugabe thought after rigging the July 2013 nation elections, he could rig the economic recovery. One of the reason why Zimbabwe is in this economic mess is that this Mugabe regime seen a lawless mafia gang with no respect of the law especially property rights. By failing to free and fair elections again and again, Mugabe has provided the proof the reputation is well founded.  

 

Zimbabwe’s economic and political problems are real and the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans now out of work and living in abject poverty and despair are real too. So the need for country to find a way out of this hell hole is real too and urgent.

 

To get out of this economic and political hell Mugabe has landed this nation we need to end this corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF one-party dictatorship which has left the nation stuck with the same corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical leaders these last 35 years. All we have to do is implement all the democratic reforms agreed in the 2008 GPA and stop wasting time on gimmicks like MDC-T’s NERA.

 

There is one big thing going for the 2008 GPA reforms, neither Mugabe and his Zanu PF party nor Tsvangirai and his MDC friends, the signatories to the GPA, can deny that not even one of the GPA reforms were implemented during the GNU!  We must demand their implementation without further delay!

 

The people of Zimbabwe have waited for the last 35 years for their first chance to cast a free and democratic vote. If there is one thing we own ourselves and posterity to finally get right it to ensure the next elections are indeed free, fair and credible.

 

This nation will not accomplish anything of any meaning or value until we establish a political system able to deliver free, fair and credible election.  For Pete’s sake let us get this right!