Anyone that obsessed with secrecy must have something to hide and, if he hasn’t, he soon will be tempted to do things he would prefer to hide. From the start of our independence, people high in government behaved as if they had dirty secrets to hide. We might debate about whether they already had such secrets in 1980; they certainly do now.
They told us that when they refused to let the UN observe our upcoming elections as they have observed many elsewhere, for example the first multiparty elections in Mozambique. They said UN observers, led by reputable African democrats, might find out too much of what was really going on. The UN observers want to meet all the political parties before the actual voting, to speak with ZESN, ZimRights, WOZA and ordinary voters in areas where there was so much violence in 2008. Even the SADC troika are having difficulties, because they, too, might expose some of the skeletons in Zanu (PF)’s cupboard to public view.
After all their ranting about Western journalists poking their noses in where they were not wanted, Zanu were so upset at Al Jazeera’s reports from ZEC’s offices every couple of hours on the day after the first round of voting in 2008 that Al Jazeera had to close their Harare office. There were some nasty skeletons in that cupboard, and they are telling us that there still are. Even during the voting in the referendum, they recorded that visitors who had briefly visited a polling station in Mbare early in the day were present at the counting. We all knew there was something fishy going on. They just gave us more evidence.
International observers, whether from the UN, SADC, AU or serious journalists and democrats of any colour, know that a flying visit to a few dozen polling stations on polling day can only hope to detect the most blatant abuses, and ZANU are experts at guiding short-term visitors away from those. So there are rules that all serious observers try to follow.
They know that what happens on polling day is only a small part of the story. They need to inspect voters’ rolls before the vote, see how voter registration is conducted, see what ZTV and the press are saying, find out how free voters feel to express their real wishes and find out how independent ZEC and servants of the state such as the police are. They need to find out whether the observers every political party is entitled to put in every polling station would be risking their lives if they tried to exercise that right.
They need to check that the rules for a good election are followed, before during and after. For example, votes were supposed to be counted at polling stations and posted there so that anyone can record them and add up the totals for themselves. We know that even senior MDC people were threatened with arrest if they did that in 2008.
We know why ZANU only want observers who fly in the day before voting, stay only in the most expensive hotels, visit a few polling stations, write their reports before counting is complete and dash home to collect their fat expenses. The whole world has got wise to that and won’t accept any government that is elected the Zanu way this time.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis