JULY 31 ELECTION…CRIMES ARE NOT ATTONED FOR ON THE DAY THEY ARE COMMITTED

One thing we actually share as a Zimbabwean people is our collective pride in being smart, literate and educated. If this pride is based on truth, how can we actually think that what we had on Wednesday 31 July 2013 can actually pass for a free, fair and credible election?

A lot of us were not participating in these elections as candidates, so our sentiments cannot be dismissed as sour grapes from erstwhile losers. No. They are legitimate concerns of a people granted full citizenship and a right to choose who governs them, secured by our attainment of independence in 1980. 

The purpose of an election is to provide mechanisms that allow us to freely choose who governs or represents us. The only basis on which people are supposed to govern is through consent by the people and that consent needs to be freely given via an election that is free and fair. The process we had on the 31^st of July does not pass the very basic tests of freeness and fairness, by any stretch of the imagination, regardless of the perception of peaceful voting that we saw on Election Day.

Election day was indeed devoid of violence, but as Reverend Martin Luther King Junior would always exhort that ‘the absence of violence is itself not peace, because peace is also about the presence of Justice’.

So the question that begs to be answered in this instance is whether or not in this peaceful process, there was electoral justice? A lot of foreign observers are keen to judge this election based on this one day, in a process that spanned over 2 months, starting with the illegal proclamation of Election Day and rules governing the election in June 2013.

Without stretching the point, I think it is fair to say that judging this election on this one day, which itself was fraught with irregularities and incidences that assisted in stealing the credibility of a process that was already patently un-free and unfair, is akin to adjudging matrimonial happiness on wedding day. Of course even if we have had issues before, or will face challenges later, there will be serious attempts to ensure that the actual wedding day will be a picture perfect moment.

But even if we were to judge this election on election day alone, which we will not do, election day itself showed clear evidence that several tactics to sway the peoples electoral verdict were employed by a range of actors. These actions and tactics made sure that whatever result would come out, could not be said to be “reflective of the will of the people”.

The first issue is the number of people who were turned away from polling stations because they did not appear on a voters roll that no one except ZEC and the Registrar Generals office had seen before Election Day. Added to these multitudes of people who were turned away for non-appearance on the roll, were others who found themselves being registered in wards and constituencies that they had never lived or voted in before.  These are important factors that impacted on people’s ability to choose their national leadership, but they are not the biggest issues.

The bigger issue is why the roll was unavailable until polling day. How does one engage in a free contest without knowing who will judge their performance? The Voters Roll is the single biggest tool in an election, which allows the citizens to know whether they are indeed part of the electorate; while for the competitors it allows them to know their audience and indeed their judges. Under normal circumstances, a voter’s roll should be released for inspection, to both aspiring candidates and citizens, ahead of the elections. The aspiring candidates will then know whose votes they are garnering for and thus target their messages and campaigns accordingly. Political actors, save for ZANU PF, thus got into this election blind, as did a huge chunk of the electorate, who got turned away on election day.

Added to the above are the very real issues of “ghost voters”, and the over 100,000 one hundred year olds in a country with a low life expectancy who continue to be a feature on the voters roll. Add to this the fact that, when the roll finally appeared, you would have in some instances thousands of people sharing the same address, while thousands of others had empty lots as addresses on the roll.

So some people got turned away and were not able to exercise their right to vote, but what about those that voted?

Election day was littered with clear evidence that a lot of coercion took place on polling day. I am certain that when the figures are compiled, the election will go down in history as the one with the largest number of assisted voters ever.  In some instances even high school English teachers were forced to plead illiteracy and receive assistance with their voting choices. Multitudes of voters in both rural and urban areas were assisted to vote in this election. A practice that is afoul of the notion of the free vote, which is supposed to act as the midwife to an election that is reflective of the will of the people.

Besides the assisted voting, you then had the shepherding of people to the polls in groups under a leader. This phenomenon was seen in rural areas were in many instances people were made to line up behind and account for their vote to headman and chiefs. In the cities the most brazen evidence of this could be seen in constituencies like Mt. Pleasant were people were clearly bussed in to vote from God-knows-where.  This evidence was captured on video and well documented by an alert press. It is estimated that over 11,000 people were bussed in to Mt. Pleasant constituency alone. Similar efforts were made in areas like Harare South, Bulawayo South, Epworth and so on. The extent to which these “organized” voters, who were voting away from home, voted their conscience, and expressed their choice freely, is highly debatable.

It seems rather obvious, from the above, that the notion of the secrecy of the ballot which was supposed to insulate the peoples will, was roundly defeated, because of the incontrovertible evidence of pressure on the voter, including, undue influence, intimidation, threats, coercion, and vote buying.

Before Election Day, the fact that the process had been rushed without any democratic reforms that would allow for a free and fair election, is something that did not escape anyone’s attention. It is on record that both local and international publics were convinced that the election process was being rushed.

The public media was unrepentantly playing the role of propagandist for ZANU PF, and true to that situation there was no free formation of voter preferences facilitated. Because candidates and parties did not enjoy fair, free and equal access to the media, the will of the people as brought out in this election is (to borrow the words of Andreas Schedler) “little more than the echo of structurally induced ignorance”.

Both on Election Day, and in the run up to Election Day, it was clear that the process was not inclusive. It is on record that over a million people who wanted to participate in this election were unable to because of administrative, practical and political hindrances to their registration by virtue of their location and age.   On Election Day, the number of people who were turned away in urban areas tells its own story. It is obvious that in this election, the citizens right to equal participation without let or hindrance was not observed.

The competence and integrity of ZEC, which have always been doubted, has been another blight on the election. The manner in which all the critical processes that took place ahead of elections including the voter registration process, voter education process, registration of candidates and the execution of duties including oversight on the media, have shown that either ZEC is totally incompetent, or it totally lacks integrity because its continuous bungling cannot be overlooked. Because hindsight is 20-20, it is obvious that most of what was passed as administrative bungling mistakes were actually part of a ploy to tilt the election in favor of some actors. 

All the above, had the impact of pouring cement on the electoral playing field. Those of us who are optimistic, had hoped initially that we could have a Feya Feya contest and that out of the concrete a flower could emerge. It hasn’t, and we were wrong, the above put paid to any chances the country had of carrying out a free and fair election, and having an outcome reflective of the will of the people.

Without getting into the allegations and suspiciuons of the heavy involvement of the shadowy Israeli Company NIKUV International Projects, in the poll, it is clear that Feya Feya, just based on the above, was a pipe dream, and that there was nothing free, fair or credible about the election on July 31 2013.

Besides the obvious robbery of the peoples vote, July 31 has got serious down stream implications on our country. It has killed most people’s belief in elections as a viable way of selecting leaders. It has further destroyed what ever trust was beginning to be built in public institutions and constitutional commissions like ZEC, and has dented peoples belief in any kind of formalized political opposition.

The theft of this election has put people in a corner, and like a cornered tiger, it is anyone’s guess how they will come out fighting, but it is clear they will be fighting for their lives.

The punishment may not be immediate, but we take comfort in Zimbabwean age-old wisdom, which spells out that crimes do not rot, its proceeds do not last, and that atonement does not take place on the day it is committed.