One cannot help but wonder just what kind of democracy is the unity government working to establish in Zimbabwe that seems so averse to elections. Fifteen parliamentary seats have fallen vacant since the signing of the Global Political Agreement (GPA), the document that gave birth to the power-sharing government. By-elections to fill up many of these seats are long over due. But all we get from the government are a variety of pathetic excuses as to why voters in the concerned constituencies cannot be afforded a chance to elect people to represent them in Parliament perhaps not a surprising thing from a government that was negotiated rather than elected into office. The other day, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) tried to make us believe that the only reason by-elections had not been called was because the commission had not been formally notified of the existence of vacancies in Parliament.
The next time the ZEC was trying to sell us another yarn that it was too broke to afford holding by-elections, even as the government was splashing millions of dollars on new cars for Members of Parliament and senior civil servants. Then there is the laughable excuse advanced by the GPA parties that after the political violence of 2008 Zimbabwe is not yet ready for another election.
That there is need for some breathing space and for the wounds to heal and that calling by-elections now would raise political temperatures and trigger yet another round of politically motivated violence and human rights abuses. Or put differently, try holding by-elections now and Zanu (PF) will return to its old brutal tactics how ridiculous? So who says the Zanu (PF) militias and so-called war veterans will not be back in the villages and townships beating, raping and murdering opponents the moment a date is set for new presidential and parliamentary elections that in terms of the GPA should take place either in the last half of 2010 or in early 2011.
As far as we know, the terror squads have never been disbanded. They may not be as active as before but they are still intact and in fact very busy on the farms where they continue to wage violence and disrupt food production. And what about the democratic change that we want the whole world to believe is unfolding in Zimbabwe?
One would have thought that Messers Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara would have wanted to use the by-elections as a window to show-case what their democracy project has achieved to date, if at all the unity government experiment is about democracy. What better way to convince the skeptics that the unity government is indeed working and that the democracy project remains firmly on course than holding 15 free and fair by-elections. But the overdue by-elections should be held now not just because that is the right and correct thing to do but also because you can only build democracy by practising it.
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga