Counting of votes should take place at the polling stations, and the results displayed outside for everyone to see. But Zanu (PF) and the military will never run out of plots. Who could ever have imagined that the Global Political Agreement itself was tampered with and the Principals signed the wrong document? Who would have thought that after the Maputo SADC Summit, Patrick Chinamasa was going to go against the agreed position and file court papers separately? I warned long before that Mugabe may have another shocker up his sleeve, so expect anything out of the ordinary realm of prudent election process.
But the clever dictator may play his games, allow voting to go on till midnight or even beyond, and then say boxes can no longer be counted at the polling stations. Due to vehicle shortages, the army may be the only institution to rely on, so unmarked vehicles may be called in to ferry boxes.
The solution is to get adequate lighting if there is still enough time to do that, and parties insist that counting will be done at the polling stations. Solar panels and generators need to be sourced from well-wishers just in case, especially given the possibility that there could be power cuts. All parties opposed to Mugabe should mobilise their people supporters to come to the polling stations when voting closes and wait outside the polling station while counting takes place.
Observers must be influenced to station themselves in the areas where violence and intimation cases have been reported. Once ballot papers are allowed to be taken away from the polling stations, things can go wrong. – Observer, by email
Post published in: Letters to the Editor