"Election more open than any since 1980," says Cross - for once, just answer question asked N Garikai

The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and political paralysis is the failure to remove Zanu PF from office even when it was clear the party was incompetent and corrupt. Zanu PF rigged the elections to stay in power regardless what the people wanted. The issue of whether these elections these recent elections were free, fair and credible is therefore important.

If the elections were free, fair and credible then we have cracked it, we are no longer stuck with the Zanu PF regime. On the other hand if the elections were rigged then we are still stuck with Zanu PF and those we think we should just accept the outcome and move on are failing grasp the very essence of our problem – we stuck with Zanu PF and we will never “move on” until we stop the vote rigging!

People like former MDC MP, Eddie Cross, were elected into parliament to help the nation end the de facto Zanu PF one-party dictatorship by bring about meaningful democratic changes including changes to stop the vote rigging. Instead of using his elected position to achieve these noble objectives he has done no such thing. He has often used his elevated position to bring confusion and not clarity to important national debates.

"Firstly, we have held another election, it was more open, democratic and acceptable than any other election I can recall, and I have been a player in all of them since 1980,” he wrote in his latest contribution.

Considering Zimbabwe has never held free, fair and credible elections since independence in 1980, it is quite possible that this year’s election would be “better” than past elections. But Mr Cross is not answering the question before us which is: were these elections free, fair and credible?

Mr Cross knows the answer to that can only be NO! How can the elections be judge free and fair when there was no free public media and 2 to 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora were denied the vote? How can the election process be credible when ZEC failed to produce verified voters’ roll and the election results show voting patterns consistent with people being bussed around and casting multiple vote?

One of the tasks Eddie Cross and his fellow MDC leaders were given during the 2008 to 2013 GNU was to draft a new democratic constitution. The document they produced was a rubbish compromise giving the people their freedoms and rights in one section but taking them all away in the next hence the reason it has failed to deliver free, fair and credible elections.

MDC leaders argue the people to approve the new constitution in the March 2013 referendum because “it was better than the current Lancaster House constitution.” A foolish argument since the task was to produce a democratic constitution and per se the nation should have rejected it because it was not what the nation wanted. But, as we can see, Mr Cross wants to use the same flawed logic to ask the nation to accept this year’s rigged elections.

“The new president (Mnangagwa), for the first time, is asking the whole country for help to secure the future and he has extended the hand of reconciliation to the opposition,” continued Mr Cross.

"I am deeply disappointed that the MDC Alliance seems to have turned its back on these initiatives and instead have continued to make the assertion that this was a ‘stolen' election and that Chamisa is the legitimate president.

"Not only is this futile, but it also threatens further violence and instability when what we really need is national unity and an agreement to put our differences aside in a concerted effort to deal with the tough issues that confront us in the next five years."

It is not the MDC Alliance’s reaction that will decide the economic prosperity and political stability of Zimbabwe but the investors and lenders. Investors do not do business with vote rigging thugs.  By rigging the elections, President Mnangagwa has just confirmed that Zimbabwe is a pariah state whose next regime change is another military coup or widespread political violence, citizen demanding an end to the mountain of economic hardships they are facing.