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The 2013 harmonised elections have been concluded and the results are now known. President Mugabe and Zanu-PF romped to an unassailable landslide victory. At the moment the elections are being judged by the observers who observed them and the majority of the local, regional and international observers have endorsed the polls as free and fair. However, the Western countries have questioned the credibility of the elections.
This was to be expected because the West is known to prefer the MDC-T and its leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai over Zanu-PF and President Mugabe.
Observers from the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, China, Southern African Development Community Elections Forum, which groups the region’s election bodies, Sadc church groups, the Sadc Parliamentary Forum and several others have judged the election as peaceful, free and fair.
This is in contrast to the verdict of the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Australia.
But what can the West say about President Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s victory when it is the same West that has imposed crippling economic sanctions against Zimbabwe as part of its regime change agenda?
The sanctions were meant to make the economy scream and turn ordinary Zimbabweans against Zanu-PF and President Mugabe.
The economy did take a sharp tumble reaching a crescendo between 2007 and 2008 but has been on a recovery path, albeit at a snail’s pace.
We urge Zimbabweans to ignore the judgment of the West because it will never view any victory by President Mugabe and Zanu-PF in a positive manner.
The voice that matters in these elections is the voice of the African observers. The declarations by the Western countries also vindicates the decision by Zimbabwe to bar them from observing our electoral process.
A number of irregularities are being bandied around as tainting the elections chief among them the so called disenfranchisement of one million voters who are alleged to have failed to register to vote.
Now who knows who these one million people were going to vote for? It is naïve to just assume that the one million people were going to vote for Mr Tsvangirai and the MDC-T.
A lot of too simplistic conclusions are being made about the elections all in a bid to discredit the polls.
A million people are quite a big number and to conclude that they were all going to vote for Mr Tsvangirai and the MDC-T is too simple an argument.
What the critics of our elections are missing is that President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF do have supporters, yes millions of them for that matter. There are hundreds of thousands of Zanu-PF and President Mugabe’s supporters among the one million who are said to have failed to register to vote.
As for the other alleged electoral irregularities, the critics are just groping in the dark to find fault about an outcome that is unacceptable to them.
But our elections must not be acceptable to the Western countries because they are not Zimbabweans or a part of us in Africa. We must not be bothered by the “international community mantra” because some will argue that the UK, US, EU and Australia are the international community and our election lacks their endorsement.
Let it be known that the AU, Sadc and Comesa are also part of the international community. And in any case the United Nations, which groups the world family of nations, has endorsed the election with UN Secretary General Mr Ban Ki-Moon saying Zimbabweans had peacefully exercised their democratic right.
Zimbabweans themselves have spoken and their fellow Africans have judged them to have freely expressed their will. That is what matters.
Online Reporter
derick.khumalo