“Umorasiswa chirimuruoko, chirimuropa unofa nacho!” (Poison
in your hand can be thrown away, if it is in your blood, it will kill you.) So
goes a Shona adage!
Some Zimbabweans have it in the heads that Zimbabwe can
replicate Zambia’s election success and finally achieve the long-awaited regime
change!
“The Zambians mastered and mapped out strategies which I
believe are:
– Massive voter registration, mainly first-time voters and the youth;
– Commitment to go and cast a ballot by every citizen eligible to vote; and
– Defend and protection of vote by the youth,” argued National Electoral
Reform Agenda (NERA) Executive Chairman Eng. Mugari Joelson.
“Everyone must go and vote. The first and most important
step is the voter registration process. Political parties are taking a back
seat in their push for electoral reforms. Citizens are not interested in any
further disputed election results.”
Mugari and his NERA friends are supposed to be championing
electoral reforms! They are arguing people to register to vote, to protect the
vote, etc. and none of these activities have anything to do with electoral
reforms. Indeed, they have abandoned the call for reforms and are convinced the
democratic changes the nation has been dying for all these years can be
achieved without implementing any democratic reforms.
“Everyone must go and
vote!” How naïve!
Mnangagwa has just decided that the 3 million plus
Zimbabweans in the diaspora will, once again, be denied the right to vote. So, “everyone”
does not include those in the diaspora! Mnangagwa supposedly won the 2018
elections with a total of 2.4 million votes or 50.8% of the cast votes. How can
the election be legal, free, fair and credible when 3 out of 8 potential voters
are denied the vote?
Even those Zimbabweans in the country have been routinely
denied the vote. For those in the opposition strongholds, it is near impossible
to register as a voter. If you managed to jump through all the hoops and
register; you will find your name is not even on the voters’ roll or it is in
the wrong polling station voters’ roll. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary
Zimbabwe have failed to vote for no fault of their own.
ZEC is legally obliged to produce a verified voters’ roll at
least one calendar month before nomination day. ZEC has never ever produced a
verified voters’ roll in the 41 years of the country’s independence.
The EU Election Observer Mission reported that the 2018
elections lacked “transparency, traceability and verifiability”, not surprising
when there is no verified voters’ roll, and that ZEC lacked independence. The
Mission report gave a list of democratic reforms that should implemented to
ensure future elections are free, fair and credible and not just a repeat past
rigged elections.
Zanu PF has not implemented even one meaningful reform from
the EU Mission report. Not one! Zanu PF has found allies in this from the
country’s opposition parties and their acolytes such as NERA who have pushed
the counter narrative that Zimbabwe can have it all without implementing any
reforms.
Mnangagwa is not a cunning devil like Mugabe; far from it. Still,
he is smart enough to know Zanu PF would lose its iron grip on power if he
implemented any democratic reforms. And, so has been as keen as mustard in
encouraging the opposition, NERA, etc. to forget about reforms and participate
in elections regardless how flawed and illegal the process happened to be.
Ever since the 2013 elections, Zanu PF has offered a few
gravy train seats, a share of the annual Political Party Finance Act pay-out
and, Mnangagwa’s new attraction, generous perks to all presidential candidates who
join POLAD. The perks to POLAD members are to buy their silence and to entice
them and others to join the 2023 rat race.
There were 23 presidential candidates alone in the 2018
elections; proof, as far as Mnangagwa is concerned, the elections were free,
fair and credible. He has argued that the opposition politicians would not
participate in such huge numbers otherwise!
Instead of Zanu PF getting its political mandate from winning
the majority votes in legal, free, fair and credible elections; the party is
getting its legitimacy from the participation of corrupt opposition politicians.
Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends should have paid heed
to the SADC leaders’ advice to postpone the 2013 elections until reforms were
implemented. MDC leaders ignored the warning and Zanu PF went on to blatantly
rig the 2013 and 2018 elections. To argue that we go into the 2023 elections with
no reforms is insane!
Zanu PF has had more than 40 years to systematically erode
the independence of the nation’s democratic institutions, corrupt them and turn
them into party departments in all but name. It is naïve to expect ZEC, Police,
etc. to deliver the people’s right to free and fair elections when these
institutions’ number one priority now is ensuring there is no regime change at
all costs!
“Everyone must go and vote!” Yeah right! Tell that to the 3
million in the diaspora have just been told they will, once again, be denied
the vote, for no reason other than to safe guard the “no regime change”.
2 comments:
The people of Zimbabwe are a naive and gullible lot, the nation should have learned a number of lessons from the watershed 2008 elections and the GNU that followed. The blatant cheating and wanton violence should have left no one in any doubt that the nation needed to implement democratic reforms to end these dictatorial Zanu PF powers. The people themselves should have been demanding that the GNU implemented the reforms to ensure future elections were free, fair and credible. It is clear that it was not only MDC leaders who slept on the job throughout the GNU, the people themselves were fast asleep.
Worse still, many people still have no clue what the GNU was about even now with all the benefit of hindsight.
Democracy demands an informed and diligent electorate to function and until Zimbabweans raise their political game this country has no hope of ever emerging out of the hell-on-earth the nation finds itself today! None! All this wittering about Zimbabwe replicating what Zambia has just done is just wishful thinking.
@ Batshele Nduna
“Can someone explain clearly without resorting to insults how the people in the diaspora are denied to vote. What I know and have done in the past, I went to Zimbabwe to register to vote. On the polling day I was in Zimbabwe to cast my vote. This is damn expensive I must admit. To live in the diaspora is my choice. Why should I burden the government to bring the ballot to my doorstep in a foreign country? If they can the better for me but the entitlement bothers me.”
What you are saying makes a lot of sense.
The argument is every Zimbabwean is entitled to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and government must make every reasonable effort to make sure as many Zimbabweans as possible are afforded that right. Zimbabwe already has a system to allow Zimbabweans, embassy staff for example, outside the country to vote without having them to fly back and forth to register and then to vote. Other nations have extended the facility to allow embassy staff to vote to their national in the foreign lands.
It is hard to see why allowing Zimbabweans in the diaspora to vote should cost much but even if this was so, asking each people to pay US$10 or so will more than pay for the expense. People like yourself will surely happily pay US$ 10 compared to the expense of flying all the way to Zimbabwe and back twice, if you have to register which is always the case in Zimbabwe.
In the case of Zimbabwe over 3 million Zimbabweans are in the diaspora, a very significant number considering Mnangagwa won the 2018 presidency with 2.4 million votes. The reasons why so many Zimbabweans are in the diaspora are irrelevant because no one forfeited their basic rights by leaving the country.
When Mnangagwa was asked about the diaspora vote in September 2018 he said the right will be secured for the 2023 elections. He did not deny this was a matter of political will on the part of government.
It is no secret that most of the people in the diaspora are political or/and economic refugees; many of them blame Zanu PF for their situation and thus are not likely to vote for the party. Still Zimbabweans in the diaspora, in the country and across the political divide should be up in arms in demanding the diaspora vote because if Zanu PF is allowed to cherry pick who has the right to vote in this case what will stop the regime doing the same to another segment of the electorate!
We can only safe guard our right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country when the right of all Zimbabweans is guaranteed.
Post a Comment