Perceptions on free, fair elections

The BBC report highlights Tsvangirai’s remarks that President Mugabe’s compliance with the court ruling was “unconstitutional,” and it somewhat gives less prominence to

President Mugabe’s gazetted argument that taking the parliamentary route over amendment procedures related to electoral laws would be “inexpedient” in meeting the court’s deadline.

Rather, the report highlights Morgan Tsvangirai’s legally defective anger as the core news the world is to be fed with, quoting the Zimbabwean Prime Minister frivolously fuming, and “President Mugabe is acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally. As prime minister I cannot and will not accept this.”

The violation so cited by Tsvangirai is all about his personal feeling that he was not consulted by the President before he chose the last date of the ordered time frame as the election date.

It would be interesting to see what the news scripts would be at the BBC and other Western media outlets if it was PM Tsvangirai wielding a court order to press for an election that Zanu-PF was opposed to, with Mugabe arguing for reforms to do with making sure that no political party should directly or indirectly benefit from donor-funding of any kind at any time in Zimbabwe.

It would surely make a lot of Western sense that Dictator Mugabe was defying a court order by the country’s highest court, and that he wanted to extend his rule well beyond the lifespan of his term of office, as all dictators are fond of doing.

The lifespan of Zimbabwe’s Parliament runs out on June 29, a mere two days away from the publication date of this piece, and PM Tsvangirai says it is “unconstitutional” for Zimbabwe to have elections before 25 August, a whole two months after the constitutional lifespan of the current Parliament, and the man still has the temerity to posture as the image of democracy.

The Constitutional Court noted the failure by President Mugabe to timeously proclaim an election date by the end of May, and accordingly allowed four weeks of added time in its ordered time frame, and Tsvangirai and Ncube are of the view that this is unconstitutional.

The PM’s problem with this ruling is not legal, but political, just like his party’s problem with July 31 as an election date is also more of a political problem than a legal one.
Welshman Ncube is simply arguing to hang in there for the sweetness of it all, and there should be no belabouring the point.

He is plainly an unelected beneficiary with all the qualities of an unelectable candidate, and he is intelligent enough to figure that out.
The real problem is that Tsvangirai feels unconsulted, and because he feels so, elections will have to wait until he feels consulted, or until an election date declared by his party is proclaimed.

The Constitutional Court can be and must be sidestepped to give the Zimbabwean Prime Minister the political feel-good factor he so much desires.
It is sad that Tsvangirai thought Sadc could help his cause — of course through the somewhat chaotic mediation efforts by the ever-blundering South African president.

Events after the proclamation of Zimbabwe’s election date add further understanding to the idea of free and fair elections as perceived in global political affairs.
As the African Union Commission Chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said recently in Geneva it makes no sense to “second-guess” over what the law says in Zimbabwe — or to debate on whether or not a court order should be sidestepped for the political expediency of individual politicians.

When Sadc met in Maputo on the 22nd of this month, there was a remarkable act of courageous civil society action in support of Tsvangirai’s shenanigans to sidestep the effect of the Constitutional Court ruling, and Welshman Ncube had his own personal, albeit selfish motivations for playing backing cheerleader to the PM’s ill-advised mischief.

He was reportedly spectacular in his melodramatic legal delivery to a regional leadership that barely bothered to try and understand what only legal minds could be excited about.

Clearly the court ruling has failed the test of “democracy promotion” and that is why Tsvangirai and Ncube descended on Maputo with vicious democratic fury — dragging in tow a legion of Western-sponsored civic activists who kowtowed in timid support.

By the time this piece is published, the Constitutional Court would probably have made a decision on Minister Patrick Chinamasa’s application for a two week extension to the July 31st proclaimed election date — essentially more of Sadc’s way of making Tsvangirai feel consulted, and less of any material change in terms electoral matters on the ground.

Whatever the decision of the court, the MDC formations have clearly demonstrated that there is no distinction in their view between their own political interests and the concept of democracy promotion, and that even the law can be sidestepped to pave way for political expediency.

An election scheduled for July 31 by President Mugabe’s proclamation fails the arbiter test of freeness and fairness purely on the basis that a contesting candidate by the name Morgan Tsvangirai “cannot and will not accept this.”

Interestingly, the election can be elevated to a free and fair election by simply making Tsvangirai feel consulted, even if it means through vexatious court applications.
There are virtually no limits to the soaring rhetoric about the marvels of free and fair elections when they are believed to be coming out “the right way.”

Opinion polls for Zimbabwe Election 2013 have not been exactly predicting “the right way” outcome, and precisely there must be adequate precursors to proclaim unfreeness and unfairness.

Where this fails, the victors must be tamed into pliancy with Western interests.
Morgan Tsvangirai wants political parties to determine editorial policies of media units in Zimbabwe as part of what he calls “media reforms,” in his view leading to free and fair elections.

His handlers have already “reformed” a few journalists like Herbert Moyo of the Zimbabwe Independent and the Chronicle’s Mashudu Nestsianda — just two of a number of journalists recently manhandled by the Prime Minister’s vicious handlers.

These barbaric attacks were after a direct publicised threat issued by the Prime Minister against journalists that fail to write praise reports about his person as a brave democracy fighter, especially in the run up to this election. Free and fair election must come in the mould of the Lebanon 2008 election, described by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as “indeed free and fair — not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run.

“No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.”
Yes dear reader, in a real deal free and fair election the president of the United States is always a candidate and he must come out the victor, wherever the election is held — defeating some anti-democracy monstrous force somewhere there, as defined by the mouthpieces of Western powers.

Like Hamid Karzai did in Afghanistan in August 2009, and like Saad Hariri did in Lebanon in 2008, Morgan Tsvangirai hopes to achieve an election victory on behalf of his Western handlers, themselves apparently convinced that the chances of their man winning an election in a revolutionary-minded Zimbabwe of today are next to nothing.

Tsvangirai’s comrade in treachery Raila Odinga of Kenya recently lost to nationalist-minded Uhuru Kenyatta. Not even the blatant threats to the people of Kenya by the United States’ White House could stop the victory of Kenyatta, and increasingly the patriotism sentiment is fast shaping African political opinion across the continent.

Patriotism is certainly not one of Tsvangirai’s attributes — not after mobilising his Western handlers to impose ruinous illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe for a lengthy decade of mass suffering, even vainly calling on South Africa to “switch off Zimbabwe.”

It is quite interesting to note that Saad Hariri defeated Hezbollah not on the popular vote but by garnering more representatives in Parliament, thanks to the confessional voting system which sharply reduced the seats granted to the Shiites — by far the largest sect.

In Afghanistan Hamid Karzai simply stole the election so blatantly that even the United States had to make face-saving condemnations.
It is the outcome of the election that matters, not the process.

It is unlikely that Western observers will be accredited to observe the Zimbabwean election this year, and the main reason is that any Western involvement can potentially undermine the prospect of an even political playing field, especially from the view point of media influence in shaping world opinion.

As was the case with Afghanistan in 2009, and Lebanon in 2008, the West will most likely determine the credibility of an election based on who wins the race – not exactly on matters obtaining on the ground.

This is precisely why Western authors can get away with baselessly publishing that in all the six elections Zimbabwe has held since 1980, Zanu-PF has won every single one of them by rigging and fraud, or by violence.

Before Zanu-PF embarked on the historic land reclamation exercise in 2000 there were virtually no accusations or allegations of any election fraud in Zimbabwe.
Then it was Zanu-PF’s tolerance of colonial supremacy over the country’s natural resources that made all our elections pass the test of freeness and fairness. If the outcome of an election brings out a pliant victor the election must free and fair.

If an election produces a nationalist victor there is no way such an election can be hailed as free and fair in the West.
It is the desire for pliant victors that makes the West so desperate in hunting for the so-called moderates in Zanu-PF.

The whole strategy is to ensure that a Zanu-PF victory comes with a significant element of pliancy to Western foreign policy — somewhat diluting the pro-people governance policies of Zanu-PF, namely the land reform policy and the economic indigenisation policy. Those Zanu-PF stalwarts that seem unconvertible have been labelled “hardliners” and it is hoped in the West that their “faction” will lose to that of the “moderates.”

In a few weeks Zimbabweans will freely speak by voting between a promised one million jobs created by Western investment one hand, and an economic empowerment of an entire population based on indigenous control of majority shares in all sectors of economic production on the other.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDENY, Australia.