In politics, as in business, we cannot take anyone on trust. Power and money are both dangerous; people easily misuse them. So we need to watch what the people we choose to govern do with the power we give them, just as we watch carefully over the people we entrust with our money. That is why we write constitutions.
The referendum did not come up to generally accepted standards of transparency or freedom on several points. These must be dealt with before we can even pretend to hold a free and fair election.
There was no need for anyone to rig the referendum. Nobody was surprised to hear that most people who voted approved the new draft. However, we all know the turnout was low and that could affect the credibility of the whole process. If less than half the electorate bothered to vote, then the 90% of those who voted for it are not any kind of a majority. There would be a big temptation to inflate the number of votes recorded. Can we be sure that did not happen?
ZEC tell us 3 million voted out of 6.6 million registered voters. Both those figures need detailed proof and that is lacking.
No count should be taken on trust if it is not conducted transparently and checked by independent observers, especially if it was conducted by a partisan body like ZEC, and this one was not entirely transparent. Votes were supposed to be counted at the polling stations in the presence of neutral observers posted at the polling station so that everyone can know the correct checked figures.
In the cases I have seen where the polling station was a tent, that notice of the voting figures was not posted. The polling station was dismantled and the figures were taken to the next stage, the compiling by ward and constituency. In most cases the count at the polling station was not observed by any independent person.
We heard one party shouting that Western observers were not wanted; this was a distraction and created an atmosphere of fear in which the number of Zimbabwean observers could be tightly controlled.
In the event the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, representing local organisations such as residents’ associations, church organisations like CCJP, and human local rights groups were only allowed to field a few hundred observers when we were told there were over 9,000 polling stations nationwide.
I have seen polling station returns which claimed people who were not present at the count had observed the vote counting. How many examples like this are there?
So unchecked, or inadequately checked, results went to the district centres to be compiled. Once there, obstacles were put in the way of a number of observers. That means somebody had something to hide. Observers can’t change the count; we hope they can see if it is properly conducted. If you don’t want false rumours to spread, you must show the truth. If you are afraid to do that, you can’t blame anyone but yourself if people draw their own conclusions about what really happened behind those closed doors.
We will have to do better than that if we want free elections. In an election each party contesting is allowed to send an observer to each polling station; few people are neutral, so balance is needed. But in large parts of Zimbabwe members of any but the ruining party would be risking their lives if they went to observe an election.
Even that party’s denunciations of violence will need time to seep through to the local thugs, who won’t believe this turnaround any more quickly than the rest of us. That rules out an election this year, and there are other reasons I must save for next week. In the meantime, remember; the price of freedom is constant vigilance.
Post published in: Opinions & Analysis