Enough is enough

The College of Cardinals who elect a new Pope have rules dictating that they must meet at their “polling station” to hold the election within 15-20 days from a Pope’s death. This Pope resigned, so the timescale is less definite; they seem to aim to start less than 15 days after the resignation takes effect.

There’s no problem about that; he announced his resignation three weeks in advance, so they’ve had time for consultation. They are a small group and only the 120 members who are less than 80 years old have a vote. They are all in touch with each other; if they want to meet early, nobody is likely to object.

We, on the other hand, are being rushed into a referendum on a draft constitution which we have not had time to study and which most of us haven’t seen yet. COPAC printed 20,000 copies of a 45-page summary for each province of the country, and 10,000 copies (per province?) of the full 150-something-page document. COPAC published the programme for their series of public meetings a week after it started – so who attended? We saw similar “communication breakdowns” about the meetings at which they were supposed to consult us about what to put into their draft, so that should be no surprise.

But the constitution referendum is not the most important issue; whatever the outcome, we will need to write our own constitution as soon as that becomes possible. Don’t hold your breath while you wait for that; our neighbours in Zambia have been consulting and arguing about a new constitution for about as long as we have, and the obstacles they face are less formidable than ours. For example, they can usually hold public meetings without political thugs breaking them up.

The election that we are threatened with soon after the referendum is more important. Let’s face it, we all know that we cannot expect free, fair or transparent elections any time soon.

Even if the Old Man is sincere, this time, in his protestations that he wants the elections to be peaceful, who believes him? It is obvious that some of his followers still think they can get away with murder as they always have, so if they don’t take him seriously, can anyone expect the rest of us to do so?

But even that is not the biggest issue. We all assumed that when the main parties agreed to work together in government, they were undertaking to prepare the ground for free and fair elections. The principal conditions required for that are:

1. a new voters’ roll, compiled without party political interference

2. a new electoral commission, independent of partisan politics

3. a non-partisan police force and army

4. freedom for all political opinions in the public media

5. independent election observers, local and foreign

6. the CIO must not interfere with the elections, or with any of these conditions

What have we seen?

1. We hear there are still 3 million dead voters on the roll and we hear allegations of other Zanu (PF) tricks with the roll.

2. The same old ZEC. If Joyce Kazembe and all the CIOs and military were removed now, the new staff would need some months to find their feet.

3. The same mutineers who refuse to salute our Prime Minister control the army and police

4. The same old hate speech from DeadBC radio and TV, no independent broadcasters

5. Independent observers should be in place now, to check on all these points and the level of political violence, among other things. Zanu (PF)’s shouting against European and US observers is a red herring, but might intimidate some of those from neighbouring countries.

6. CIO non-interference? Tell that to Joyce Kazembe.

But we need to tell the world we will not agree to elections under present conditions.