“Government and the party leadership gradually became alienated from the ordinary working people; they formed elites that ignored the opinions and needs of ordinary people. From the side of the leadership came propaganda of success, notions of everything going according to plan, while on the other side of the working people there was passivity and disbelief in the slogans being proclaimed… the leadership organized pompous campaigns and the celebration of numerous anniversaries. Political life became a move from one anniversary celebration to another.” – Mikhail Gorbachev (Cited by Gumede W. M; 2007)

Zimbabwe has entered its 12th day after holding the harmonized elections on the 29th of March 2008. To this day, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is still withholding results of the presidential elections after taking more than a week to release the parliamentary and senatorial elections results.

At the core of the withholding of results is the Zanu PF interference with the ZEC operations which is supposed to be highly impartial, transparent and objective in the discharging its role. This is evidenced by how state operatives shut down the ZEC National Command Center at the Rainbow Towers Hotel which was supposed to announce the presidential outcomes, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) forced the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Cooperation (ZBC) from the command center on the 6th of April 2008, giving ample evidence that the state operatives have taken over the activities of ZEC.

As if the interference was not enough, the ruling party is on a crusade of accusations against ZEC officials of fraudulent and clandestine activities, which the ruling party is flimsily maintaining were masterminded by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in cahoots with ZEC officials as a ploy to ouster the Zanu PF government. This has since triggered a wave of arrests of supposed ZEC officials, clearly showing that the police officers are working under the instructions of the ruling party elites whose motive is found on maintaining power through extra-legal undertakings. It is however shocking when the ruling party starts claiming the results being ‘wrong’ when firstly the results are not made public and secondly when the whole process of counting and verification was done in the presence of both Zanu PF and MDC polling agents who signed confirmation of what they witnessed.

The interference by the ruling party in ZEC’s activities were also confirmed in the High Court yesterday in the Case of the MDC versus ZEC where the former is calling upon the courts to order the latter to release the election results. The ZEC lawyer Mr. Chikumbirike argued that an order, demanding ZEC to release the results will lead to dangerous consequences, giving an innuendo that ZEC was highly likely to defy the order.

Chikumbirike’s utterances point to the travesty of the concept of democracy. It latently points that the ruling party was thumped in the democratic process, hence the cooption of the rogue militant agents such as the war veterans, service chiefs and other para-military arms to contain the growing mood of tension which is looming in the country. Begging the question: If Zanu PF had won the elections, why would they require virtually two weeks announcing their victory?

That Zanu PF lost in this election is no longer a matter of contest but a given reality which explains why the party administrator Didymus Mutasa was quoted on the South African Broadcasting Cooperation (SABC) as saying, “ … why do you want us to release ‘wrong’ results? ZEC is still going through the verification process!”

The process of going through an election in any democracy is founded on the basic fundamentals that an election acts as a democratic thermometer which gauges the temperatures of dissenting views and how the people’s choices on who gets into the public office and those existing accept the people’s wishes. Failure to salute such voices is a recipe for creating a totalitarian establishment.

The lack of accountability is noted by how the losing government extended the term of cabinet office and that of the president through the use to the nefarious Presidential Power Act Temporary Measures to feel in the vacuum left by the failure of the very same regime to announce the results of the country’s top job. Zanu PF must be reminded that the reason they participated in this election was to get the people’s mandate. ZEC displayed results on the polling stations on the 29th of March 2008, which were interpolated by the MDC and other independent groups showing that, the ruling party lost. It must respect the wishes and aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe who expressed their disapproval of the governance and legitimacy crisis which besieged the country since 2000.

It is from such an end that the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon called upon the Harare administration to release the results urgently, to avert looming chances of a conflict. As noted by the UN Secretary General the Crisis Coalition can not agree any further. It is increasingly becoming difficult to expect the nation to keep on waiting for the results which the ruling party is sitting on. Such behavior breeds a very fertile ground for nurturing conflict as people will be acting on speculative information due to the information vacuum deliberately crafted by the ruling party.

The Coalition welcomes the decision by the Zambian President, Levy Mwanawasa, the current chair of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) of convening an extraordinary summit on Saturday 12 April 2008 to discuss the way forward given the behaviour by the region’s problem child.

However, the Coalition calls upon SADC to make a lasting intervention with benchmarks of deliverables. This is specifically important given how the ruling party has become an oasis of defiance on the recommendations of the region and other international bodies such as the United Nations and other regional blocks. A chance has therefore been presented to SADC to make a lasting positive legacy on the Zimbabwean issue; the onus is on the region to enter in the global memory bank as having played a fundamental role when its decision was needed most or propping up an errant regime, which will turn them into villains.

We therefore wish to bring to the SADC attention as they meet on Saturday that the government of Zimbabwe is presided over a civilian coup where the vanquished are acting as the victors. A coup where the functions of ZEC are taken over by the Central Intelligence Organization; where the president dissolves and extends cabinet in the same month without the mandate of the electorate!

We therefore call upon the region to send a strong message that they will not entertain such an electoral fraud before it denigrates into a conflict which will prove to be costly to resolve to both Zimbabwe and the region than making a strong decision when it is timeous, which will save its integrity and thousands of lives in Zimbabwe.

- Ends -

Issued by

McDonald Lewanika

Spokesperson

Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition