"ZEC is controlled by junta," admit MDC - penny has finally drop but what next MDC P Guramatunhu

The issue of producing verified voters’ roll is an important one. Without an audited voters’ roll it is impossible to verify that all those eligible to vote are on the roll and only those eligible to vote are on the roll. When the voting takes place; only those on the voters roll vote and vote once. Without a verified voters’ roll it is impossible to have free, fair and credible elections because it is impossible to stop vote rigging; impossible!

In the last elections nearly one million, mainly opposition supporters were denied the vote because their details were not in the constituency voters’ roll they expected. Meanwhile Zanu PF was able to bus its hooded youths and army recruits from one polling station to the next, casting multiple votes. Everyone, including the few foreign election observers, witnessed the blatant vote rigging but with no verified voters’ roll, the smoking gun, it was impossible to prove anything.

The 2013 AU election observer team, headed by Chief Olusegun Mathew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo former Nigerian President, noted in their report Zimbabwe’s failure to produce a verified voters’ roll a month before the elections, the very latest, as demanded by the country’s constitution. The AU let Zanu PF off the hook by noting this serious failure as an “irregularity” the regime must put right in future.

The whole world is watching the AU election observer team for this year’s election to see if the team will once again let Zanu PF get away with yet another rigged election. Because the regime has still done nothing to ensure there is a verified voters’ roll before this year’s election and thus comply with the country laws and AU’s demands.

“The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has refused to provide election stakeholders with copies of the provisional voters roll which was being inspected by voters for the last ten days,” reported Zimeye.

No one who has been following the chaotic way Zanu PF, through it surrogate body ZEC, has conducted the whole registration exercise is surprised to hear that. The whole voter registration exercise was started very, very late; September 2017 when it should have started January 2015, at the latest. Even with all the good will in the world, there was no way ZEC was going to register 7 million voters in the allocated five months; in the end only 5.4 million were registered. Even then, no one has had the time to audit the 5.4 million registered voters.

The 5.4 registered voters were given 10 days to check the provisional roll; another impossible task.

The voter registration exercise was started very late and now everything is being rushed through without being checked; this was all deliberate and for one purpose – to ensure there is no verified voters’ roll.

Yesterday, Tuesday, the Elections Resource Centre filed a court application demanding that ZEC release the provisional voters’ roll.

As of today, President Mnangagwa has set 30 July 2018 as the day the nation will go to the polls to elect a new government. The voting day has been set and still the nation has no clue who are on the voters’ roll and, no doubt, will never know who voted at the end of the day.

“This is a critically important case. The question is why the ZEC has to be taken to court at all to get this information? If this was a truly independent body, and not controlled by the military, one would think it would be committed to transparency,” said David Coltart, former MDC Senator and an aspiring MDC Alliance candidate in this year’s elections.

No Mr Coltart; the most important question here is why is the opposition dragging the nation into flawed and illegal elections, yet again. You, yourself admitted the folly of contesting the 2013 elections knowing there was no verified voters’ roll, amongst many other irregularities.

“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the elections,” you admitted in your book.

“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”

The MDC family has since regroup to form the MDC Alliance. What is your excuse this time for once again failing to do the “obvious” thing and withdraw from these flawed elections? Zanu PF is blatantly rigging these elections and you, Mr Coltart and your MDC friends are giving the process the modicum of political credibility for the sake of the few gravy train seats Zanu PF is giving away as bait to the oppositions.

“If this was a truly independent body, and not controlled by the military, one would think it would be committed to transparency!” Yeah right! As if the penny has just drop! Well, now that the penny has dropped, you now know that know ZEC was controlled by the junta, that there will be no verified voters’ roll, that Zanu PF is blatantly rigging these election as we speak, etc.; are you finally going to withdraw from participating in these flawed and illegal elections?????

Clearly Zimbabwe’s opportunistic opposition cannot be trusted to do the obvious thing and boycott these flawed elections. One hopes that the international election observers, including the AU and SADC, will have the courage to do the right thing and judge these flawed elections null and void! How can elections be free, fair and credible when there is no something as basic to elections as, verifiable voters’ roll!!!