In the last week of September and the 1st week of October
2012, the nation almost consistently woke up to screaming headlines to the
effect that elections had been set for the 31st of March 2013. On
closer reading, it turned out that the “declaration of an election date” had
been the statement of “a wish” by the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe,
His Excellency Robert Gabriel Mugabe, as part of his court papers fighting a
challenge to stage bi-elections for 3 vacant Parliamentary seats in Matabeleland.
The “wish”, in Santa-style, was said to have been granted by the High court,
who in their judgement on the case ordered that “ the period within which to
comply with the order (to hold by-elections)
be and is hereby further extended to the 31st of March 2013”.
The High Court, in qualifying their judgement, sighted the Presidents “ desire (wish) to hold Harmonised Elections in
the last week of March 2013”.
In my humble opinion, the statement of the “wish” by the President
of the Republic in these court papers is setting us on a good path. We need to
know as an electorate and as citizens when we will be able to vote for a
national leadership of our choice. We need to know when key political processes
that are significant markers towards our democratic transformation, as a nation
will take place. The voting public must be kept in the loop. An election is not
the people’s birthday, where the election itself is thrown as ‘surprise party’ that the owners of the
day do not know about, till it happens. What the President did in his court
papers, moves us a significant way towards doing the right thing, but as we
have grown accustomed over the last 32 years, also an indication of how to do
the right thing, wrongly.
It is important to do the right thing, but it is even better to do
the right thing, the right way. The
President of the Republic, and those who support him, are constantly in the
habit of subverting due process and pretending that they are living in Zimbabwe
pre 2008. The reality on the other hand, is that this is 2012, and 3 political
parties, who all have to weigh in, especially at the Executive level, on key
issues like when the next elections will be held, share incumbency in
government. It doesn’t matter whether the President of the Republic likes the
Minister of Industry and Commerce, the reality is that the Teacher has to
consult the Professor on these key issues and that both of them have to agree
with the Trade Unionist who is Prime Minister. All of them have to make an
effort to ensure that elections, whenever they agree to them, are not a façade,
but a real opportunity for people to exercise their freedom in choosing who
governs them. And this is my point. If you read nothing else, read this, that
“All of them have to make an effort to ensure that elections, whenever they agree to them, are not a façade, but a real opportunity for people to exercise their
freedom in choosing who governs them”.
Having said that, you will be hard pressed to find any other country
on this planet where the citizens are kept in the dark with regards to when
critical democratic processes where people decide their destiny and hold their
leaders to account, are treated like a state secret. You would think that a country which spares no
blushes in bringing out the private sex lives of consenting adults, would have
no qualms with bringing out critical information of public interest and
concern. The people have a right to know when critical processes that have a
bearing on the countries political and economic prospects will take place. The
argument has been made that the Zimbabwean transition, is pegged, not in terms
of time but in terms of steps to be taken before an election can take place.
This is good, but the challenge that we have seen in Zimbabwe is that when
politicians are given such a blank check, they have no imperative to perform
and or deliver. They will constantly push to see the depth of the Account that
they have to draw the blank check from. It is precisely because of this false
impression that the Inclusive Government seems to exist in perpetuity, that has
seen little to no progress taking place in terms of some the key steps that
need to be taken before an election takes place.
The inclusive government was established on
the strength of a Global Political Agreement (GPA), which was pitched as a high level solution to the
political malaise that had become the order of the day in Zimbabwe.
By its own admission as
cited in the GPA, The Inclusive Government was intended to
"create a genuine,
viable, permanent, sustainable and nationally acceptable solution to the
Zimbabwe situation".
Sponsored and guaranteed by the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) as an “ African Solution to an
African Problem”, the Inclusive government was meant to be an experiment in
national stability and democratisation, with the GPA providing the theory of
change that propelled and dictated how the government would operate and what it
should have achieved.
In short the GPA theory was predicated on the hypothesis
that, an inclusive approach to governing and problem solving by the 3 major
political parties represented in parliament, with the GPA as a guide, would
result in the reduction of political instability,
arrest of the economic free-fall, halt the humanitarian crisis, and institution
of democratic reforms - generally providing an inclusive approach to the
resolution of the Zimbabwean crisis.
What the GPA provided for was a clear entry
into the inclusive arrangement, and a road map on how to navigate in the maze
of reform. What it didn’t clearly spell out, outside providing a map, was how
long these parties had to navigate the maze of reform. The GPA provided an
entry, but was very unclear with regards to an exit. Thus the blank check analogy, that part of
the challenge that has led to the GPA being at best a failing experiment, and
at worst a failed experiment, is this lack of definition with regards to the
exit point. A question which the President of the Republic has begun to address
through his “wish”, which is the right thing to do, but which has gone about
doing wrongly.
Our political leaders need to sit down and discuss two critical issues. Firstly they should posit what they
think is a realistic electoral calendar for the two critical electoral
processes of the Referendum on the Constitution and General Elections. In other countries that have undergone
transitions like ours, the calendar was always clear and stakeholders had a
clock to race against. Kenya, from where the GPA and Inclusive government
template is suspected to have been adopted from, is a good example here. They
had their Political disputes on the eve of 2008 just after Christmas, and eventually
agreed on a GNU, but since then, had their Constitutional reform process
concluded in 2010. As of now, Kenyans know that they have a General Election on
the 4th of March 2013, and that if those elections are not
conclusive, there will be a run-off election on April 10 2013. In the meantime,
the time between the referendum and the election has been used to
operationalize the new constitution, putting in place a new Elections
management Body – the new Electoral and Boundaries Commission, and instituting
bio-metric voter registration, among other things.
The above is not say that the Kenyan situation is perfect and on
point, far from it. They still have their own issues, but frameworks and
timetables are clear. If indeed we did copy, then we poor copy cats because the
same cannot be said for Zimbabwe. Which brings me to the second thing that our political parties need to work out and
take to SADC, or that SADC needs to facilitate.
To demand clear time frames and dates is not to negate the need for
reforms. On the contrary, what it does is to give urgency and agency to the
reforms that are critical and should be put in place before the election takes
place at a known time. To that end, once agreement has been reached on a clear
and dated electoral calendar, there is need to reiterate the things that need
to be done by way of Concrete electoral reforms to facilitate that the two
critical processes are carried out in a free and fair manner. Elections are a critical cog in any
democratic process as they lay the basic foundation of governance of the state,
on the basic premise that authority to govern derives from the consent of the
governed, For that happen, elections must not be choice less, and cohesion and
militarisation must have no part to play in them. Our political leaders need to
ensure that this is the case.
The actual issues do be dealt with to avoid a choice less election,
and worse a failed transition in Zimbabwe are not difficult to discern, because
they are already largely captured in the GPA. In addition, Civil Society has been
screaming from mountain tops about the need to create a salubrious electoral
environment through; keeping the military out of politics, cleaning up the
voters role, instituting an impartial arbiter in elections through a
professional elections management body, expressing a disdain for the use of
violence in elections and the need to have these elections internationally observed
and monitored.
These things need to be done within a realistic time frame that is
cognisant of our realities as a country – which by and large are that, we are
in a bad place with regards to having a sound electoral framework and an
environment conducive to free political expression, free political activity and
the holding of free and fair elections.
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