Zimbabwe Information Center in North America
A project of the North American Coalition for a Free Zimbabwe (NACFREEZ)
MDC
By Stanford G. Mukasa
Letter from America
January 14, 2008
Zimbabweans must be spared of emotional roller coasters of rigged elections
Recent speeches by some top officials of the party indicate that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will participate in the elections scheduled for March this year.
But there is great concern that elections in March will not be free or fair because they do not take into account most of the agreements reached at the talks between ZANUPF and MDC under the sponsorship of South African president, Thabo Mbeki.
Robert Mugabe’s regime has rejected the implementation of the agreed constitution before elections.
He has also dragged his feet over implementing many other agreed provisions like independence of the electoral supervisory commission, audit of the voters roll, freedom of assembly expression, assembly and the press which are controlled by the notorious POSA and AIPPA laws.
Amendments to this draconian legislation only exist on paper. They have yet to be signed into law.
Technically, MDC rallies can be banned under POSA. Broadcasting is still a monopoly of ZANUPF. The external broadcasting stations SWRA and Studio 7 remain banned from operating inside Zimbabwe.
In addition, the delimitation of constituencies has gone ahead with the utter disregard of what was agreed upon at the Pretoria talks. The voters roll has not been subject to independent scrutiny and amendments. The Electoral supervisory commission is not independent.
The Zimbabweans in Diaspora have been denied their right to vote. This means one quarter of the population of Zimbabwe will not be able to vote.
The bottom line to this is that elections in March will be conducted under exactly the same conditions as in 2000, 2002, 2006. In all of those elections Mugabe and ZANUPF won. In all of those elections there was overwhelming evidence that ZANUPF and Mugabe had rigged the elections. Mountains of evidence to this effect were presented before the high court but very little or nothing has been done.
There is already mounting fresh evidence that the March elections will be rigged in exactly the same way as before. This means that Mugabe and ZANUPF’s win are already predetermined.
The same rigging machinery, the system for manipulating votes and election process are all in place ready to be used in March.
More constituencies have been added to rural areas not because ZANUPF enjoys a lot of support but because rural people are very easy to manipulate and threaten.
With food shortages and widespread starvation, Mugabe and ZANUPF have contracted with China to supply food that will be used as a political weapon against rural people.
Rural people are now being told that unless they vote for ZANUPF they will not get any food.
Neither will they get farm implements.
Mugabe’s intelligence agents are now roaming rural areas telling people that they will cast their votes in secret but government has ways of telling who voted for ZANUPF or for MDC.
These CIO operatives have used camera features in their cell phones to show how they will be able to tell from a distance how the people voted.
They are warning the rural people that if Mugabe or ZANUPF are defeated at elections ZANUPF will resort to the armed guerrilla struggle similar to the one waged against Ian Smith regime.
Mugabe has also been encouraged by the Kenyan presidential elections. He knows that, if everything else fails, he can always manipulate the final vote count.
Mugabe has done this before. He formed an election directorate made up of top army officials that was authorized to receive the vote counts from polling stations and then issue the votes to the registrar general for public release..
Insiders have revealed that the number of votes given to the registrar general from the election directorate were vastly different from those that came from the polling stations. In other words, the final votes for each of the candidates are an administrative and political decision of the election directorate who arbitrarily decided how many votes to award to each candidate.
Worse still, it is estimated that over forty percent of the polling stations throughout Zimbabwe did not have representatives from the opposition MDC to monitor and verify the count. The reason was MDC representatives were chased away or arrested by the police. A similar situation is most likely to prevail unless the MDC mobilizes a strong and defiant presence at each of these polling stations.
Given these circumstances of intimidation and a manipulation of the vote count strategy to declare Mugabe and ZANUPF winners regardless of how the vote went, predictions point to one inevitable outcome – Mugabe and ZANUPF will obviously be declared winners even if the vast majority of the Zimbabweans will vote against Mugabe and ZANUPF.
The key questions here are:
What arguments have persuaded MDC to participate in the elections knowing fully well that the political environment for conducting these elections falls way below the SADC standards for conducting free and fair elections?
Are the top MDC officials privy to information that the rest of us do not know and which assures them that some internal mechanisms or external interventions will be place to ensure there is no manipulation of the votes?
What plans or strategies, other than appealing to the high court, does the MDC have in place in the event of another rigging of elections by Mugabe and ZANUPF?
Let us begin with the first question: Why is MDC participating or leaning towards participation in the elections despite all the flaws?
There has not been a formal announcement to this effect. This leaves the possibility that MDC might boycott the elections, although this option appears to be receding in the background.
Some analysts have argued that President Tsvangirai and the MDC are under increasing pressure to participate in the elections even though the system is again open to rigging and manipulation by Mugabe.
Pressures appear to come from the fear that the Mutambara-led faction of the MDC is ready to participate in the elections. If Tsvangirai’s MDC boycotts the elections Mugabe can always argue that the elections were legitimate because a faction of the MDC led by Mutambara participated.
This logic by Mugabe will highlight the mistaken view that MDC is split in the middle about whether to participate in the elections. As a result, the argument goes, Tsvangirai’s MDC will lose its power to grant or deny legitimacy to the elections.
Another pressure seems to come from the sitting MDC members of parliament. For some very obvious reason they are very much in favor of participating in the elections. For many MP’s Parliament is now more than a place to fight for democracy and human rights. It is now a source of income.
Going to parliament for many members of parliament is like going to work. With 80 percent unemployment in the country boycotting elections would be tantamount to losing a job and joining the unemployment ranks.
Yet another pressure to participate in elections appears to be coming, ironically, from the international community. Faced with the reluctance by Zimbabweans to launch acts of civil disobedience or mass protests against Mugabe, the international community is probably losing patience and enthusiasm to help the dormant and docile Zimbabweans.
To the international community Zimbabweans appear to be waiting for some external intervention to save them from the monster called Mugabe and ZANUPF.
It is also reported that many Zimbabweans would like to participate in the elections. People have told the MDC leadership that, regardless of the environment, MDC must go ahead and contest the elections.
There appears to be a strong hope and expectation, especially among the rural people that it is still possible for MDC to win and the only way to find out is to participate in the elections.
Many people have argued that if the MDC boycotts the elections it will lose one strategic avenue to debate and challenge Mugabe in a democratic way.
They point out that MDC can still be a fighting opposition that is needed to avoid a ZANUPF parliament that will rubber stamp all laws. They argue that some hostile legislation has been amended as a result of vigorous debates and challenges from the opposition MPs.
However, there are many problems with the above arguments for participating in the flawed elections.
The biggest problem with participating in the elections is Zimbabweans will once again be put through an emotional roller coaster where participating in elections generates all kinds of hopes and expectations of victory – only to be quashed after Mugabe’s top officials manipulate the vote count.
When this happens Zimbabweans go through a period of mourning and promises not to participate against in future flawed elections. But come next elections euphoria rules and everyone is agog with enthusiasm to participate in the elections.
Each time Mugabe declares himself winner in elections that members of the opposition participated weakens the argument that the elections were not legitimate because they were neither free nor fair.
When opposition parties participate in flawed elections Mugabe becomes even more stubborn at negotiations. Mugabe knows that he does not have to make significant concessions at the talks. He has convinced himself that the opposition parties will routinely participate in the elections even if Mugabe does not give any concessions.
In the past few months Zimbabweans have been treated to tough talk by the MDC top officials who had said that unless Mugabe agreed to certain demands for leveling the electoral playing field the opposition movement would boycott the elections.
Boycotting the elections is probably the most effective leverage the MDC has. Any elections that do not include the active participation of the opposition movement will most seriously and effectively challenge the legitimacy of those elections.
As a matter of fact, Mugabe is scared stiff of running elections in which only ZANUPF participates. Even if minor and inconsequential parties, including Mutambara MDC faction, were to participate in the elections the conspicuous absence of the MDC led by Tsvangirai would significantly cast doubts on the legitimacy of the elections.
But now that the MDC appears to have decided to participate in the elections, although there has been no official announcement to this effect, what will MDC tell the public on the day after elections when Mugabe successfully rigs the elections and declares himself a winner?
Will Zimbabweans go into mourning again and wait for the next elections several years from now?
Time has come for the MDC to draw a line in the sand and beyond which the party will not cross.
Either MDC boycotts the elections, now that it is very clear that Mugabe plans to rig these elections big time.
Or, should the MDC decide to participate in the elections the party must mobilize people not only to vote but to ensure that the elections are free and fair.
Mugabe is hell-bent on rigging the elections. MDC must be hell- bent on ensuring that Mugabe does not get the opportunity to rig them. This will entail mobilizing people to guard their ballots. In the Philippines over 20 years ago the opposition parties had vigilante groups that monitored every polling and counting station day and night to make sure there was no interference with the people’s votes. In Kenya it is reported that two people who tried to manipulate votes were killed by vigilante groups.
MDC can also go the way of the opposition in Kenya where the people were mobilized into mass demonstrations against the way votes were announced to favor the sitting president.
Zimbabweans must be spared of another emotional roller coaster. If MDC decides to participate in the obviously flawed elections the party has better have in place a strategy to protect people’s votes or more effectively protesting the rigging of votes by Mugabe.