Voters Roll Rigmarole!
The Zimbabwe Democracy Institute (ZDI) yesterday became the latest in a string of CSOs to launch an adverse report on the July 31 poll, highlighting the flaws that have bedeviled the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s preparations.
ZDI launched Electoral Battleground: Voters Roll Rigmarole, which I thought was a play on the rigging apparatus Zanu PF has already put in place!
And indeed it has been endless talk about the country’s preparedness, or lack thereof, to hold such an important national process, with Zanu PF’s insistence coming under scrutiny and wide speculation that the “revolutionary party” already has a poll outcome in its favour, and most disturbingly, in collusion with ZEC.
Yet ZDI insists on the vigilance of not only itself but other CSOs working for a better Zimbabwe.
But with Tobais Mudede fashioning himself as the sole custodian of the voters’ roll, the ZDI remains awake to the fact that this has become the arena where Zanu PF will cook the numbers to rig the poll.
And like many critics of these rushed elections, ZDI raises concerns of the flawed reading of the pre-election conditions which so far have seen little or no violence as a template to give these polls as clean bill of health.
The rigging machine has been re-fashioned, and only yesterday, a senior South African government official actually made reference to the violence-free atmosphere as reason not to condemn the poor preps plaguing the ZEC.
Among many issues the ZDI report raises is the disenfranchisement of millions by deliberate exclusion from the voter’s roll through the frustrating voter registration exercise, the role of the security apparatus where the report comments that “ZANU-PF and the military have proven to be inseparable” and also laments the arrest of human rights defenders and raids on CSOs.
These are concerns that have been raised before, and as the election beckons next Wednesday, all these remain unresolved, and the logical “therefore” is a poll that does not meet the benchmarks of normal practices.
Only today, we read from Patrick Chinamasa that poll funding had been secured from domestic resources, and we long thought it was finance Minister Tendai Biti’s mandate to make such an announcement!
But as Pedzisai Ruhanya, the ZDI director said, “We are not here to cause chaos; we are here to manage ZEC chaos.”
And one needs not be a clairvoyant to foresee mayhem on July 31.