MDC have since launched a High Court challenge of the BVR exercise arguing that the electoral commission did not have enough equipment to register voters and that the registration process itself lacks transparency.
One of the glaring vote rigging irregularity in the 2013 elections was the regime’s failure to produce a verifiable voters’ roll. The regime has known all along that the country was going for this new BVR system and the task of producing a new voters’ roll will be time consuming. Voter registration should have started years ago, not now with less than a year to go before voting day.
Even with the best political will in the world, there is no way anyone can register 7 million voters in four months being proposed, compile the data and produce the draft voters’ roll, allow people check the draft, incorporate the corrections and release the verifiable voters’ roll one month before voting day as is required by the law. We know political will to do the right thing is the one thing Zanu PF does not have.
Indeed, wasting time, dilly-dally over the purchase of the BVR kits, etc. was all deliberate so that the key activities of voter registration, etc. will then be rushed through allowing no time to check and verify the roll. Zanu PF regime is like a crocodile that muds the water so the fish cannot see it coming. This is standard Zanu PF modus operandi.
During the GNU Zanu PF wasted time on trivial matters and there was stampede to finish drafting the new constitution. In the stampede, President Mugabe “dictated the document,” as Zanu PF MP on the drafting parliamentary committee, Paul Mangwana, latter boasted. Anyone would have learned after that but clearly not Morgan Tsvangirai and this MDC lot!
When voter registration did not start by 2014 MDC should have been concerned, by 2015 alarm bells should have started ringing and by 2016 there should have been panic in the opposition camp. The end of 2016 was cut-off date for starting voter registration. To be starting now can only mean one thing, the regime is mudding the waters to hide its vote rigging tricks.
It is no exaggeration, to say Zanu PF has started rigging the 2018 election!
"The prescription of a date to close new voter registration creates a risk of disenfranchising voters," MDC argued in court documents seen by AFP.
"There is no need to jump the gun and order a chaotic, premature commencement of the registration process.
"It is evident that, by and large, there are no kits to commence registration."
How pathetic is that? Instead of complaining that the voter registration has been unduly delayed and will not be done properly MDC leaders, in their infantile wisdom, are complaining in High Court that the process is being rushed.
"We will use all constitutional, political and legal pressure to make sure we have (an election) that is free and fair next year," MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu told AFP.
When the penny finally drops in the MDC heads that the voter registration was a hash-hash job giving them no time to check and verify anything it will be too late. They will have no legal leg to stand up on to complain that they were rushed when they are the ones asking for the process to be delayed!
With no reforms in place, billions of dollars looted from Marange diamonds, no obligation to produce a verifiable voters’ roll, etc., etc. there is no doubt that Zanu PF will rig next year’s elections. It is madness contesting elections one knows will be blatantly rigged. The only reason MDC leaders continue to contest these flawed elections is greed.
“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 (July 2013) elections,” explained Senator David Coltart, MDC
minister of education in the GNU, in his recent book.
It took the people of Zimbabwe 20 years or so to finally accept that President Mugabe and his Zanu PF ruling party are incompetent, corrupt and a tyrannical dictatorship.
Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends have been on the political stage for 17 years now and 5 of which in the GNU and yet they have failed to deliver even one democratic reform. Not one! There is a mountain of evidence proving beyond all doubt that they are breathtakingly incompetent and corrupt with a knack to shoot themselves in the foot. Still, many Zimbabweans continue to follow MDC blindly, like sheep to the slaughter, because having rejected Zanu PF they find it very difficult to reject MDC too regardless of their pathetic performance record.
Zimbabwe is not the first nation to find itself in the unenviable position of having a incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical ruling party and an equally incompetent, corrupt and utterly useless opposition. We must have the political courage to accept this reality and reject both Zanu PF and MDC.
Both Zanu PF and MDC for their own selfish reasons are keen for next year’s elections to go ahead regardless that they will not be free, fair and credible. This is madness and it is up to us the people to put an end to this charade. We must demand the implementation of the democratic reforms BEFORE elections and refuse to take any part in the voter registration, etc. because anything else we do will be seen as giving credibility to the flawed and illegal process.
4 comments:
There are somethings the nation can tolerate and others it must never tolerate and postponing elections is one of them. The world will not stop spinning just because President Mugabe is sick or dead so why should elections be cancelled because of that!
The last GNU was formed under the asepsis of the SADC as the guarantor. To think Zanu PF can unilaterally decide to form a GNU and pick and choose who will be its partner(s), what the GNU will be tasked to do, etc. is a nonsense. It was Zanu PF as a partner in the last GNU who saw to it that it accomplished nothing and to expect the second GNU, with Zanu PF at the very heart of it, will accomplish anything of substance is naive, to say the least.
Zimbabwe has waited for the last 37 years for meaningful democratic change and it would be unforgivable if the nation is cheated once again and sold another dictatorship with a new name and new faces. We know exactly what we want; implement all the democratic reforms and deliver the individual freedoms and human rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections. We also know that Zanu PF and MDC politicians are corrupt and incompetent, they will never implement the reforms fully and timeously.
We have wasted a lot of time and human and material resources these last four decades because we had a corrupt and tyrannical system of government. We now have a chance to dismantle the dictatorship and replace it with a working democratic system of government. We cannot afford another mess up!
If Zanu PF fails to deliver free, fair and credible elections next year, then the regime must go; no if no but! Let the nation decide what happens next, Zanu PF must have no say in that.
Zimbabweans have risked life and limb to elect these MDC leaders into power and after 17 years, 5 of which in the GNU, they have failed to bring about even one meaningful change. The sooner Zimbabweans finally accept that MDC leaders are breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent the sooner they can get down to the important business of defining what kind of leaders the nation wants and then go out and find such leaders.
People get the government they deserve and we cannot deny that we deserve this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship complete with its entourage of corrupt and incompetent opposition parties. The country is in economic ruins forcing unemployment to soar to nauseating heights of 90% plus and 72.3% of our people live on $1 or less a day. Unless we do something about ending the misrule the country will remain where it is today, the poorest nation on earth. We are not doing anything to end the bad governance by contesting flawed elections, it is insane to try the same thing for 37 years and expect a different result.
Of course, we deserve this Zanu PF dictatorship, we have foolishly granted it legitimacy for the last 37 years.
SADC leaders have said we should not contest flawed elections. We have stubbornly ignored their advice because we cannot think outside the box, we are insane.
Pararenyatwa, then Andrew Flaming, Hospital before independence was one of the best health facility in Africa and decades of under funding has reduced it into a glorified clinic. It is ok for Mugabe and his family, they can go to Singapore . Tsvangirai and other leaders go to SA and other countries. The impoverished majority have not make do with the bush medicine of 100 years ago.
Zanu PF in another clandestine election victory, wins 3 council seats in Norton and Harare.
SADC leaders have advised Zimbabweans not to contest in any elections without implementing the reforms, Tsvangirai and company refused to listen and contested the 2013 elections. The elections were rigged, as SADC leaders had warned would happen. It was only then that MDC accepted it was futile contesting flawed elections. They vowed not to contest future elections without reforms. "No reform, no elections!" they said.
MDC have boycotted all parliamentary and council elections since the rigged July 2013 elections. MDC did not have any candidates these present elections and yet they have already said they are contesting the nationwide council and parliamentary elections. What has change, you might well ask. Nothing, absolutely nothing; Zanu PF is set to rig next year's elections just as it rigged the 2013 elections.
MDC are contest next year's flawed elections, disregarding their own "No reform, no elections!" party resolution for the same reason they did not listen to SADC leaders's warning on the same matter - greed.
“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,” explained Senator Coltart.
“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 factions have since come together to formed the MDC Alliance and yet no one is talking of boycotting the elections – proof that winning those few seats Zanu PF gives away, a bribe, to entice the opposition to contest the elections regardless how flawed and illegal the process is working.
There is really nothing for the ordinary Zimbabwean to gain from contesting flawed elections. SADC leaders’ advice not to contest flawed elections was directed, in the first instance, at MDC leaders but, ultimately, they were warning us, the people of Zimbabwe. The real question is how long is it going to take us before the penny finally drop and we accept that after 37 years of rigged elections it is insane to keep contesting and hoping for a different result!
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