Zimbabwean elections are not free, fair and credible and the declared results are therefore a figment of the regime and not a reflection of the democratic wishes of the people. To suggest otherwise is an insult to those whose right to a meaningful vote is so callously and repeatedly denied.
“Despite the economic hardships being experienced in the country, the rural electorate seems confident in President Emmerson Mnangagwa-led administration as shown by Zanu-PF's continuous wins in by-elections conducted so far,” reported TellZim.
“The Zaka East parliamentary by-election held on September 21 is the latest result which has proven that the Nelson Chamisa-led MDC, which is the most formidable opposition party, still has a long way to go in efforts to break Zanu-PF's stranglehold on rural areas.”
Everybody who has observed Zimbabwe elections will tell you that Zanu PF abuses state aid and power to coerce ordinary people and, if its hold on power is still threatened, brute force.
“Observers widely reported on efforts to undermine the free expression of the will of electors, through inducements, intimidation and coercion against prospective voters to try to ensure a vote in favour of the ruling party. Such practices also included direct threats of violence, pressure on people to attend rallies, partisan actions by traditional leaders, collection of voter registration slips and other measures to undermine confidence in the secrecy of the vote, manipulation of food aid and agricultural programmes and other misuses of state resources,“ stated the EU Election Observer Mission final report.
Zimbabwe’s own government appointed Human Rights Commission confirmed that Zanu PF operatives and local traditional leaders harassed and threatened rural villagers.
In Zimbabwe, rural voters, especially, are nothing more than medieval serfs beholden to the overbearing Land Lord, Zanu PF. Many rural areas are facing starvation this year, Zaka East is one such area, and it is therefore naive to anything other than a land slide victory for the overbearing land lord!
Why is the opposition participating in these elections, when it is clear the process is flawed and illegal designed to deliver a rigged Zanu PF land slide victory?
A legitimate and logical question but to answer it one has to go back to the beginning, 1980 when the gained her independence and Zanu PF started rigging elections.
Zimbabwe’s first elections; to marked the end of white colonial rule and usher black majority rule; were NOT free, fair and credible. Zanu PF did not withdraw all its freedom fighters and operatives from the country side into Assembly Points as agreed in the Lancaster House Agreement. The operatives campaigned for the party and their message to the voters was clear - if the party did not win the elections, the civil war would continue. Of course, the people voted overwhelming to end the civil war!
There are those who have argued that this was an empty Zanu PF threat and that the fear factor played no significant part in the elections results. This narrative has been totally discredited by the Gukurahundi massacre that started in 1983 when the regime proved beyond all doubt that it would stop at nothing to establish absolute power and its long cherish goal of a de facto one-party dictatorship.
The Zanu PF dictatorship was corrupt and incompetent and with country’s economy in serious decline the people soon realised that to stop the economic rot they must end the dictatorship. For the last 20 years, the people have risked life and limb to elect MDC leaders on the understanding that they will deliver the democratic changes to stop Zanu PF rigging elections.
MDC leaders have had many golden opportunities to implement democratic reforms and dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship, especially during the 2008 to 2013 GNU, but wasted them all. MDC members were celebrating the party’s 20th birthday this week but have nothing much to show for it. The party has failed to implement even one token democratic reform in all its 20 years on the national political stage. Not even one!
Indeed, ever since the end of the GNU in 2013, MDC leaders have pointedly abandoned all attempts to implement the reforms, they have participated in elections knowing the process was flawed and illegal and Zanu PF would blatantly rig them to secure a land slide victory. They also know that Zanu PF would give away a few gravy train seats as bait to induce the oppositions to participate regardless of the rigging.
MDC has won a few gravy train seats, especially in the urban areas, enabling such party leaders like Tendai Biti and David Coltart to return to parliament. Nelson Chamisa too benefited from the party getting a share of the annual Political Party Finance (Act) payout; $3.4 million this year and Chamisa, as party leader, got 20%, $680 000.
MDC will continue participating in Zimbabwe’s flawed and illegal elections even in rural areas where Zanu PF has the rural voters under the cosh because the above payout is based on winning 5% or more of the total national vote cast during national elections. So the opposition parties need to cast their nets as wide as possible; every vote count. Every little helps!
This has worked in Zanu PF’s favour as the party needs the opposition’s continued participation in these flawed elections to give its own stay in office some modicum of political legitimacy.
Like it or not Zimbabweans must now wake-up to the political reality that the nation’s concerted efforts to implement the democratic changes to end the Zanu PF dictatorship of the last 20 years have come to nought. Instead of implementing reforms and ensure there are free, fair and credible elections; MDC leaders sold-out on reforms and have settled for the few seats and trappings of power Zanu PF gives away as bait to entice the opposition to participate in flawed elections.
If Zimbabweans hope to end the serious economic meltdown; which is now a lot worse than it was 20 years and the country is now in serious danger of complete economic collapse and social chaos; we must now come up with plan B on how to implement the reforms. Plan A of electing MDC leaders to do it has failed.
“Zanu PF’s Zaka East parliamentary by-election landslide victory proves the party’s stranglehold on rural areas!” Actually, the result proves Zanu PF’s VOTE RIGGING stranglehold, which is a totally different kettle of fish! In rigged elections the ordinary people have no say and it is extremely patronising, to say the least, to suggest otherwise. And understanding the difference is a vital first step in our fight to get out of the economic and political mess we are in.
The undertaking, which is part of Government's initiative to restructure State-owned enterprises (SOEs) that have been draining the fiscus through suboptimal operations and periodic bailouts from Treasury, is envisaged to result in significant cost savings and operational efficiencies. Secretary for State enterprises reform, corporate governance reform and procurement in the Office of the President and Cabinet Mr Willard Manungo told The Sunday Mail that the Statutory Instrument to give effect to the consolidation process now awaits gazetting.
ReplyDelete"The bundling of Zesa Group is underway. A Statutory Instrument to give effect to the consolidation of Zesa companies has been drafted and is awaiting gazetting," he said.
"The Ministry of Energy and Power Development is in the process of procuring a consultant through the public procurement law to assist in the consolidation of companies. The consultant shall give guidance on developing optimal operational functions and structure."
Zesa was unbundled into four entities - Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (Zetdc), Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), Powertel Communications and Zesa Enterprises (Zent) - in 2006.
ZESA was formed soon after independence from a number of companies including CAPCO, ESC and Harare and Bulawayo Electricity Departments. In 2006 ZESA was broken up and now the companies are being merged yet again! What a circus!
What is required here, before we start messing around with these parastatals, is for this corrupt and incompetent Zanu PF dictatorship to step down. Let Zanu PF do anything and we can be certain of one thing - it will be a costly mess.
THE ruling Zanu-PF Masvingo Province has mobilised 15 buses to ferry more than 500 people who are set to participate in the march against illegal sanctions that were imposed by Western countries.
ReplyDeleteSadc countries have declared 25 October as the solidarity day against illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe and resolved to conduct various activities in their respective countries on that day to resoundingly call for the immediate removal of the embargo.
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is a result of 39 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF misrule, nothing to do with sanctions. Sanctions are an added pressure of the vote rigging regime to step down.
These SADC morons who have failed to condemn Zanu PF for rigging the elections are now siding with the regime’s attempt to draw attention from its illegitimacy and the country’s economic meltdown by blaming the later on sanctions.
Read my lips: SANCTIONS ARE STAYING!
Indeed, the west must tighten the sanctions screw by roping-in more individuals on the list such as Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance, Professor Mthuli Ncube, Media mogul Trevor Ncube, MDC opposition leaders, etc. who are propping up this illegitimate Zanu PF dictatorship by continued working for it and/or participating in flawed and illegal elections.
“We are ready to engage with Mnangagwa, but on principle,” he said.
ReplyDeleteHe continued saying, “we don’t want to share power with ZANUPF, we want to share a vision, we want to share ideas, we want to share the pride of the people,” said President Nelson Chamisa yesterday.
Nelson Chamisa and his MDC party have made it crystal clear that they want to share political power by forming a National Transition Authority, a watered down version of the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The party confirmed this in its party congress in May, five months ago. Now Chamisa is telling us something else, “he does not want to share power but a vision!”
Neither Chamisa nor Mnangagwa have a vision, they lack the intellectual ability to come up with anything above mediocrity and hence the reason the country is in such a mess. Both man have blundered from pillar to post dragging their respective parties and the nation along with them!
The US ambassador to Zimbabwe has joined the UN and the International Monetary Fund in throwing down the gauntlet to President Emmerson Mnangagwa on corruption and human rights.
ReplyDeleteBrian Nichols said there was no chance of the world heeding Mnangagwa’s plea for the end of sanctions until Zimbabwe cleaned up its act.
The IMF has raised the red flag over alleged corruption involving a key Mnangagwa ally, Kuda Tagwirei of Sakunda Holdings.
It said the government had printed money to pay one of Tagwirei’s companies, in the process undermining the country’s fledgling currency.
The international pressure on Mnangagwa mounted as he attempted to convince the UN General Assembly that he had done enough to justify the lifting of sanctions imposed during the rule of Robert Mugabe.
“Those that impose illegal sanctions must heed this call and lift them now … Cooperation is a win-win game. Sanctions are a lose-lose game. Zimbabwe deserves a restart,” he told a poorly attended session in New York.
High-powered lobbyists in Washington and London hired by the government, including BTP Advisers, Mercury Public Affairs, Ballard Partners and Avenue Strategies, have failed to improve international perceptions of Zimbabwe, and Nichols said Mnangagwa had no one but himself to blame for allowing corruption to go unchecked.
“It is high time government does a cleanup. What we need is a stable economic environment, so any measures meant to effect that are welcome,” he said.
With strong public institutions, Zimbabwe would not be a beggar, he said, because billions stolen from public coffers could have been used to provide health care and a higher standard of living for all Zimbabweans.
“Just look at a few cases: in the command agriculture programme for general Zimbabweans, there is over US$3bn unaccounted for in that programme.
“You have the National Social Security Authority, where the former minister [Prisca Mupfumira] that oversaw that programme is currently on trial because over US$70m was looted.
“Even in the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration, millions of dollars have been stolen. You have an electricity utility where millions have also been looted, and the list goes on and on.”
The ambassador said investors remained keen on Zimbabwe but were anxious about runaway inflation and disregard for corporate governance.
“If Zimbabwe could resolve these key issues, that will improve the country’s attractiveness to investors. Underpinning all of that is transparency and the rule of law,” he said.
Nichols said Mnangagwa’s claims in his state of the nation address this week that the US had stage-managed a series of recent abductions were “ridiculous, insulting and obviously untrue”.
At the heart of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is the nearly four decades of bad governance that sucked dry the nation’s wealth and energy and scared away all local and international investors. The cure for bad governance is democratic reforms designed to restore the independence of the democratic institutions and their ability to uphold the rule of law and perform such key activities as delivering free, fair and credible elections.
By failing to hold free, fair and credible elections Zimbabwe missed the opportunity to cure itself of the curse of bad governance. The argument that this illegitimate Zanu PF regime can remain in office, even if it implemented every democratic reform put before it, it will still be an illegitimate government.
If we are ever going to get out of this vicious cycle of illegitimate regime staying in office to rig the next elections, a cycle that has been going on for the last 39 years now, then Zanu PF must step down so we can appoint an interim administration to prepare the nation for fresh free and fair elections. Those who want Zanu PF to remain in office in the hope it will implement reforms are refusing to learn from the past - 40 years of Zanu PF rigging elections!