Come clean on election dates

It started off with three by-election court challenges which some Members of Parliament sought to have in three constituencies—Nkayi South, Bulilima East and Lupane East—in accordance with the law. There is nothing wrong with that: by-elections should be held for seats that have fallen vacant.

In fact, these mini-polls should have been held in more than a score of constituencies, where the people have been without representatives for years.

However, Zanu (PF) seized on legal technicalities to rope in general election time lines on the basis of the by-election court challenge. Initially, President Robert Mugabe indicated that the by-elections would be held by end of August 2012. This date then was moved to end of March 2013, which, his legal team argued, should coincide with the holding of general elections.

Now the President is saying that as the life of Parliament expires at the end of June, that is when general elections should be conducted. All this is happening within the context of the by-election legal challenges.

Now the MDC-T President, Morgan Tsvangirai, has decided to wade into the court case, demanding to be made a respondent. As a result of this, the March deadline ruled earlier by the courts has been extended.

We believe that Tsvangirai decided to intervene in order to ensure that Mugabe would not have his way in determining the election dates single-handedly. But the point remains that the courts should not be the ones to tell Zimbabweans when to cast their votes to choose their municipal, parliamentary and presidential representatives for the next five years.

In fact, we see the court case as diversionary tactic on the part of Mugabe – and we certainly do not need any diversion at this moment. Our suggestion is simple, we need to follow what the new constitution, which we are confident is coming soon, says regarding dates for the holding of elections. The three principals in the current coalition government ought to sit down and discuss the best way forward and act constitutionally.

There is nothing that compels us to hold elections by June as Mugabe has argued. The law states that they must be held within four months from the date of the dissolution of Parliament. There is no need for us to rush things. Doing so will only suck us into a vicious cycle of disputation that we can ill afford.