MDC calls for BVR protests - why bother if already have strategies to win rigged elections N Garikai

With President Mugabe and Zanu PF, we all know their intention is to rig the coming elections to ensure no regime change. They have used all manner of dirty tricks to achieve their objective included cooking up the vote count to reduce Tsvangirai’s 73% in the March 2008 election to 47% to force the run-off and then using violence to secure an 84% victory.

SADC leaders proposed in the 2008 Global Political Agreement (GPA) which gave birth to the GNU that Zimbabweans must implement a raft of democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging BEFORE holding another election. SADC leaders have been criticized for many things as regards their handling of the Zimbabwe political crisis throughout the GNU years as the guarantor of the GPA. The one thing no one can deny is that SADC tries to get Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC to implement the reforms but were ignored.

MDC leaders “were busy enjoying themselves during the GNU, they forgot why they were there” one SADC leaders said in sheer frustration after Zanu PF rigged the July 2013 elections.

When it comes to Tsvangirai and his MDC friends; they are corrupt and incompetent, so incompetent that there is a constant state of confusion and chaos in the opposition camp. At the heart of Tsvangirai’s political ethos is the belief that MDC can win rigged elections and hence the reason the party ignore SADC leaders’ advice to implement the reforms and not to contest elections without implementing the reforms.

President Mugabe has risen to MDC’s challenge of him losing an election he has cart blanche powers to rig. He has upgraded his vote rigging from using a loaded dice to using a dice with six on all six sides. How can he possible lose if he can recount 73% and turn it into 47% just as he cannot throw anything else other a six with his special dice!  

Instead of Tsvangirai accepting that Zanu PF cannot be dislodge from office as long as the regime has the dictatorial powers to rig the vote and thus embrace reform; he is, stubbornly, searching for ways to win the rigged elections. In his stubborn foolishness, it is not surprising that Tsvangirai has again and again contradicted himself.

Two weeks ago, MDC lodged a Court application to stop the voter registration exercise on the grounds that ZEC did not have all the BVR kits to carry out the task. A stupid move, given the exercise should have started soon after the July 2013 elections and we should now have a verified voters’ roll. The failure to produce a verified voters’ roll in the 2013 elections is one of the burning issues in that election. The regime has stubbornly refuse to release a verifiable voters’ roll to this day; the equivalent of refusing to let anyone examine the dice. The MDC should have been demand to have the voter registration started a.s.a.p. and should now, a year before the elections, be demanding a verified voters’ roll and not be the ones demanding the registration to be delayed!

The Courts have thrown out MDC’s application on the grounds that it is “not urgent”.

“People are being frustrated by the slow pace of the registration and in urban areas, especially in Harare, an average of 72 people are being registered daily while hundreds are being turned away,” complained Douglas Mwonzora, MDC Secretary General, in respond to the slow pace of the registration.

“The strategy of both ZEC and the regime is very simple they want to discourage people from registering to vote. They want Zimbabweans to give up on voter registration and therefore abandon voting altogether.”

President Mugabe knows that he cannot win a free, fair and credible elections and so he has no choice but rig the vote. Yes, one way of achieving his objective (there are many others such as buying the vote, intimidating the voters, etc. and he is using them too) is frustrating the real voters to deny them a vote and then produce a voters’ roll of fictitious voters who will then vote for him.  

By stubbornly refuse to implement the reforms before the elections MDC have made it all possible for President Mugabe to continue rigging elections and get away with it.

“We have to go into the streets and peacefully demonstrate against the attempts to steal our vote because this voter registration battle is the Waterloo and Mugabe, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and Zanu PF know it,” announce Mwonzora.

“People are not begging to be registered but they are demanding their right to register and vote and they must be given their rights. Shortly we are going to advise on the dates and venues of mass action and no one is going to stop us.”

So, what exactly will you be demanding Mr Secretary General of MDC, “the party of excellence,” sir? Are you demanding that the voter registration must be postpone, as you requested in your Court application? If so, how will this help the people “demanding their right to register and vote”? The people of Zimbabwe will be ill-advised joining in these street demonstrations with no clear objective.

If MDC truly believe it can win rigged elections, then the party will win next year’s elections regardless of all the Zanu PF and ZEC vote rigging shenanigans. So, what is there to protest?

It is high time people told Morgan Tsvangirai and company to stop all this nonsense of MDC will win rigged elections. Zimbabwe would have had free, fair and credible elections in 2013, at the latest, if Tsvangirai & co. had not sold-out and implemented the reforms during the GNU. Right now, the nation would be debating economic policies and nation building and not still stuck on voter registration and reforms.

The people of Zimbabwe must now demand the full implementation of the democratic reforms BEFORE BVR voter registration, rallies or anything whatsoever to do with these flawed and illegal electoral process. There is no way ZEC can produce a verifiable voters’ roll now and it is madness to contest another election with not even something as basic as a voters’ roll!