ZEC chairperson, Justice
Rita Makarau, says everyone must register if they want to vote in the 2018 elections.
"The voter's roll
that we are going to use in 2018 will not make any reference to what happened
in 2013" she said
"If you registered
for 2013, but don't register for 2018, your picture will not be able to appear
on the voter's roll, and your name will actually not be on the voter's roll,
which is going to be polling station specific".
Yes madam, but to what end
and purpose?????
Nearly one million people
(ZEC said 300 000) were denied the vote in 2013 not because they had not
registered to vote, they had. They were denied the vote because their details
were not in the constituency voters roll they expected. If this had affected a
few hundred but not one million in a voters roll of six million! The number
assumes even greater significance when that too was Mugabe’s winning margin!
Even if one accepted the
one million voters whose details were posted in the wrong constituency voters
roll was a mistake; the mistake would have been discovered and put right if the
voters roll had been released for public scrutiny a month before the voting day
“at the latest” as required by law. The regime has stubbornly refused to
release the voters roll even to this day.
The official position is
the regime cannot release the 2013 voters roll because “of technical problems”.
The regime has produced voters rolls as required for the many by-elections post
July 2013 and thus was able to access the voters roll data required regardless
of the technical problems!
There is recorded video
evidence of Zanu PF supporters being bussed from one polling station to the
next to vote in the July 2013 elections.
If the 2013 voters roll
was made public people would establish beyond doubt that the one million denied
the vote, the bussed voters and many other irregularities were not mistakes but
calculated vote rigging trickery.
The mistake would have
been discovered and put right if the voters roll had been released at least one
month before the voting day. The voters roll was never released even to this
day because doing so will show that the posting of individual data in wrong
constituencies was a deliberate and calculated thing. Nearly one million voters
were denied the vote in 2013 by this single dirty trick!
No doubt the new biometric
system will give the regime even more opportunities to deny many people their
vote whilst granting party loyalists the opportunity to cast multiple votes. The
regime can release the biometric voters roll months in advance confident that
few people will have the equipment and technical know-how to uncover the dirty vote
rigging shenanigans.
Even if the opposition
parties were to deploy thousands of their members armed with laptops to cross
check the biometric data in ever town and village; this will be an arms’ race
in which the regime, given its total control of ZEC and all the other state
institutions, will emerge the winner guaranteed!
As long as no meaningful
democratic reforms designed to stop Mugabe appointing party loyalists who are
accountable to him and him alone to run key State institutions like ZEC,
Police, Judiciary, Public Media, etc.; these bodies will continue to operate as
if they are just another Zanu PF department.
Police Commissioner
Augustine Chihuri has publicly admitted that as far as the Police is concerned
all those opposed to Zanu PF's continued rule they are "agents of
regime-change". The Police see it as their sworn duty to stop regime-change
by denying the opposition members and public at large their basic freedoms and
rights including the right to free and fair elections and even the right to
life.
We need to implement all
the democratic reforms designed to end the tyrannical control Mugabe has over
ZEC, Police and all the other public institutions to free them to carry out
their statutory duties of ensuring free and fair elections without fear or
favour. Until that is done we can continue to hold these mock elections whose
results is a pre-determined no-regime-change and pretend they elections were
free, fair and credible.
No election designed to
produce no-regime-change result can ever be a free, fair and credible election;
that is an oxymoron.
When Mugabe rigged the
July 2013 elections he was cocksure he will go on to rig economic recovery too;
that did not happen. Today the Zimbabwe economy is tittering on the edge of the
precipice;
unemployment has soared to
90%, corruption has reached new height of $15 billion dollar being looted and
no one is arrested, etc.
Mugabe’s grip on power has
never been more tenuous than it is today and all because he failed to deliver
economic recovery. The economic meltdown is socially and politically
unsustainable and it is the worsen economic situation that is eroding Mugabe’s
power.
Justice Makarau can go
ahead with the voter registration and the hold yet another mockery of an
election; rigging another election is not going to improve Zanu PF’s grip on
power.
Zimbabwe is caught up in
the vicious cycle of a bad government implementing bad policies which result in
poor economic performance and poverty and so to retain power the failed leaders
resorting to rigging elections. We, the people, have to implement democratic
reforms to break the cycle; as we have seen already, rigging the next elections
will not break the cycle or end the economic meltdown.
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