Saturday 1 June 2013

SADC 9 June Summit to call for observers 3 months before and after election - last ditch to stop repeat of 2008!


SADC is to hold an extraordinary summit on Zimbabwe next weekend. This is the regional body’s last second of the last minute effort to save Zimbabwe from having yet another bloody election by demanding that observers should be allowed three months before and three months after voting.

“The extraordinary summit will seek to amend the principles and guidelines on elections to extend the 14 days for the deployment of observer missions. We want the observer missions in Zimbabwe at least three months before the elections, whose date will be made clearer at the summit,” said a senior Sadc official.

“These elections are not going to be easy for Sadc. We want to make sure the environment is conducive to free and fair elections so that the Zimbabwe issue is resolved once and for all.”

The GPA called for the implementation of a raft of democratic reforms and the writing of a democratic constitution. SADC is aware none of the reforms were implemented and the Copac constitution is weak and feeble and thus making it a certainty there elections will not be free and fair.

SADC’s insistence on having observer three months before the elections and the same period after is a damage limiting exercise. It would have been better to have had the reforms implemented and have a democratic constitution but that is water under the bridge; thanks to PM Tsvangirai’s incompetence.

The Constitutional Court has already ruled Zimbabwe must have elections by the 31 July 2013 and so the observers will not have the full three months if Mugabe follows the Court ruling!

Mugabe and Zanu PF want the summit to be confined to raising the $ 130 million required to hold the elections.

Why, oh why, has SADC allowed Tsvangirai to waste the last five years and not implement the reforms and to accept the weak and feeble Copac constitution? The ordinary Zimbabweans, ourselves, blundered by voting yes in the referendum and now we are going to pay dearly for that act of folly!  

1 comment:

Zimbabwe Light said...

@ Chris

If there are no free and fair elections, and signs are that will be so, then Zimbabweans will or should revisit Copac constitution and the fact that PM Tsvangirai lied to them when he as-sured them to approve it confident it will deliver free and fair elections.

I do not expect you Chris to revisit Copac and hold PM Tsvangirai to account; you have nev-er understood the critical importance of having a democratic constitution and have already forgotten what the PM promised. The PM and MDC are counting on people like you's shal-lowness and leaky memory; they knew they can do or say anything you will still vote for them the next day.

Of course, I have moved on. The Copac draft is now the supreme law of the land. It is the cold reality that it is not going to deliver free and fair elections that I am dealing with here!