admin
President Mnangagwa took the correct emergency action on Wednesday night to extend voting to yesterday in the 40 or so wards where the local government ballot papers were late or were going to be very late, so everyone did in the end get a proper opportunity to cast their votes.
And once again the voting yesterday in these delayed polls was peaceful with voters lining up once again, but this time finding their polling stations ready for them.
Those who were concerned about the emergency extension should remember that there are more than 1 200 wards in the Zimbabwean local authorities, with contested elections for councillor in more than 1 100 of these, so the problem and extension was limited to about 3,5 percent of the country’s wards. This is a small percentage, and we need to keep this in perspective.
There were the usual allegations that this was an attempt to “rig” the poll, but it is difficult to understand how letting everyone vote is rigging a poll.
In fact by making it very easy for voters in the 40 wards to cast their vote, in daylight, the proclamation probably helped the opposition parties most since a large block of the affected wards were in Harare that in the past have tended to favour opposition parties.
Admittedly, the extension meant that the party election agents of the major political parties had to be on duty for longer, but that is life.
As we have explained, the first line of defence against anything untoward happening is the absolute right of every candidate to have an agent in every polling station handling ballots for the post they are contesting.
In practical terms, major political parties with a presidential and National Assembly candidate in every polling station, along with a local authority candidate, can have a maximum of three agents in every polling station in Zimbabwe.
This was the position of Zanu PF and the CCC, even though the CCC missed nominating for some local authority wards.
But because the party had nominations for president and MP in every constituency it had the right to the three.
We hope the CCC exercised its rights fully, since the opposition would then be assured that nothing could happen that “their” agent had not seen with their own eyes.
Agents are invited to sign off on the station results and we hope they all took up that invitation.
It makes the process so much more transparent for everyone.
While the agents have signed declarations in advance to keep the results confidential until the official announcement, it seems obvious that a political party will keep an eye on the totals and if there is difference between the official total and the total they expected from agent reports, will make rapid checks and if necessary launch an election petition, which must be heard urgently by a High Court judge on standby for precisely this purpose.
Observers, and this includes the civic society teams that are accredited, are simply there for back-up but are not part of the process, which candidates and their designated agents are.
Arithmetical errors can happen, but are rare. But the people who bear the burden of checking everything are the most partisan, the candidates and their agents.
Admittedly there are some candidates who cannot find enough agents, but these are from very small parties or are independents.
Those coming at or near the bottom of the 2018 presidential election, for example, might well have had to deploy more than half their supporters if they were to take advantage of their agent rights in every polling station in the country, but major parties should have to problem lining up the 5 500 or so agents they are entitled to.
There is a tendency in much of Africa for losers to claim rigging. By now this should be something in our past.
Zimbabwe has been running multi-party elections since 1980, and most African countries that had a one-party system or a spell of military rule have had multi-party elections for some decades.
We should all have developed systems that make rigging impossible without someone raising the alarm. Zimbabwe has.
People should be adult enough to accept the results, and not be like a small child who refuses to play if they do not win.
Every politician who has a serious candidacy likes to proclaim in advance that they believe they are backed by a majority of voters. This sort of self-confidence is in some ways commendable, otherwise why bother to stand.
There are candidates who stand simply to offer their alternative, but realise they have zero chance of winning. But they should not be depreciated. This is democracy in action, where a person can stand up and say this is what I stand for.
It is always sad when you lose when you thought you had a reasonable shot of winning, but in the end it is not what candidates say, or commentators or foreigners or civic society organisations. It is the voters in the wards, constituencies and the nation who make the choices, and only the voters.
And in the end the losing candidates must respect the voters and respect the choices those voters made.
And major parties should then analyse why they lost a group of constituencies, or the election as a whole, and figure out what they could have done to have made more voters prefer them.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Act, and the Constitution that backs it, was largely hammered out in debate between Parliamentarians of all parties and is almost entirely a product of consensus, just as the Constitution is.
There are no major political differences in the goals, as there can be in other legislation.
This is not surprising. Everybody wants election systems that work well, and make sure that there is no messing around.
So transparency, honest voting and honest counting are all universal aims.
And with legislators from all parties having not just input, but working to achieve consensus this is achievable and was achieved.
Online Reporter