Information given to The
Zimbabwean shows that
an Israeli called Lior Hazan, who sources said worked for Nikuv International
Projects, modified electronic data on the constituency rolls for the
by-elections on March 14.
This
modification occurred well after the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had compiled
the constituency rolls for the by-elections, but the sources said it indicated
that he must have been the one who also sent an earlier version of the
electronic roll samples for use in the pilot voter registration exercise for
the two constituencies.
Apparently
to make it difficult to follow the data, the files that were given for the
by-election rolls are not ordinarily searchable as required by the
constitution.
Said one
of the sources, an expert on electoral matters: “The files have been presented
in macro ‘filters’ that allow certain filtering within the file, but not across
constituencies. In this case a comprehensive search is not possible in the
format supplied by ZEC.”
So here we
have a foreign company, Nikuv, with a dubious vote rigging reputation issuing a
voters roll that is deliberated block so that no one can search and extract
information from. The law says it should be searchable but Nikuv deliberately
issue the roll in the format that no one can search it.
And
literally hours before voting is due to start the same Nikuv, willy-nilly,
replaces the voters roll!
MDC
factions have been calling for “alignment of electoral laws to the new Copac
constitution” and the replacement of some of the people involved in the
elections like ZEC chairperson Justice Rita Makarau. How would the firing of
Justice Makarau stop Nikuv tampering with the voters roll? Even if ZEC assumed responsibility
of the managing the voters roll, taking it away from the Registrar General’s
Office, how would ZEC stop Nikuv doing what it is doing right now?
The 2008
Global Political Agreement (GPA) called for the Government of National Unity
(GNU) to implement a whole raft of democratic reforms design to end the
overarching political influence of the Executive over the Police, ZEC, etc.
None of these reforms were ever implemented. Not even one.
The GNU
was also tasked to produce a new democratic constitution but failed to do so
because the Copac constitution avoiding all the contentious issues that would
have been addressed by the reforms if any had been implemented.
If we are
serious about having free, fair and credible elections then we must go back to
the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA and get them ALL properly implemented.
We must disregard this piece-meal and rather confused MDC’s approach of calling
for electoral reforms knowing from the word-go these reforms will never ever
deliver free and fair elections.
MDC have
pointedly refused to call for the implementation of the democratic reforms
agreed in the GPA because that they would, tacitly, acknowledge that they made
a fatal politic mistake by failing to implemented even one reform. MDC betrayed
the nation by failing to implement the reforms; we must not allow them to
compound that betrayal by wasting time and resources messing around with the
weak and feeble Copac constitution under the pretext that it alone still
deliver free and fair elections.
.
1 comment:
@ Patrick
Israeli government was warned by the West about Nikuv's activities in Zimbabwe's 2013 elections but they chose to ignore the warning.
Israel was the one democratic nation that continued to cooperate with the apartheid regime in SA right up to the regime's final collapse.
Yes of course, Nikuv love money, a shake of the thirty pieces of silvers seem to send them into ecstasy; Nikuv was paid a princely sum of US$ 10 million for their 2013 work and no doubt will be paid yet another seven figure sum for their latest work. But it is clearly more than money; after being paid millions last time for some cheap con job – the government has pointedly refused to release the voters roll because the tampering is not rocket science – they should have walked away. These Nikuv guys seem to derive some sadistic pleasure in seeing Mugabe drag the whole nation, all 12 million, into the depths of hell!
The Zanu PF dictatorship is imploding and the regime is collapsing in spite all Nikuv’s efforts to ensure it ruled the nation forever. Once there is regime change this nation owes it to itself to thoroughly investigate the role of companies like Nikuv have played in the treasonous act of rigging national elections and deny-ing the people their basic human rights.
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