…. you can’t even tell a good lie anymore!
Hey – but am I missing something here? Zim has an independent electoral body – the Zimbabwe Electoral Comission (ZEC) – who are appointed by the President, and are supposedly completely autonomous. On TV they display their logo, surrounded by the words “INDEPENDENCE”, “TRANSPARENCY”, and “IMPARTIALITY”.
We also have a government and a ruling party that insist that they have run a free and fair election. Then again, several groups of international observers have departed from Zim after echoing the government’s mantra of “free and fair”.
Since 29 March we have had several developments that are so bizarre and so completely ludicrous that they effectively rubbish any pretence that the just-held Zimbabweean harmonised elections (Presidential, House of Assembly, Senatorial and Local Government) were free or fair.
Firstly, after an emergency meeting of the ruling party’s politburo last week, they issued a statement saying that they would participate in a run-off for the presidential poll.
Secondly, shortly after that, the very same zanupf announced that they will be demanding a recount on the presidential vote. Last but not least, the government has ordered the arrest of ZEC officials for allegedly understating the official presidential vote figures!
This is all very well, but the difficulty I have with this is that ZEC have – to date – refused to publish the results of the presidential poll.
So what run-off are zanupf talking about? What result are they basing their decision to demand a recount on? How indeed do they intend to prosecute people for understating the count, when only ZEC should actually have the official figures?
In fact, the only presidential results that have been put on the table are the unofficial results collected and put forward by the MDC. Surely zanupf would not act on onofficial results, and surely not those from their mortal enemies? Theoretically, there are no other results until ZEC makes the official results public.
Or could it be that ZEC has handed the results over to zanupf? Surely not, because they are independent, transparent and impartial? Surely the government would never stoop so low as to accepting/taking the official results from ZEC prior to their official announcement?
But there are only two sources of the results: so which is it zanupf? Are you cribbing MDC’s figures (which would be a really stupid move), or have you stolen/appropriated the official figures from ZEC – which has to be illegal in itself?
Time to resign Bob. You are a failed politician – you can’t even tell a good lie any more!
April 10th, 2008 14:50
Actually there are three possible sources of the results that Zanupf has:
1.) Taken from the MDC’s results which were taken directly from those published at polling booths
2.) ZEC
3.) Zanupf themselves took results directly from those published at polling booths
However I think few people will doubt that the soure is ZEC
April 10th, 2008 15:57
I think the african solution of creating Governments of National Unity in inherently flawed. I now fear for the future of South Africa as well as Zimbabwe.
April 11th, 2008 21:56
What is incredibly frustrating right now is that diplomats are still calling for a “release of the polls” when zanupf has already had enought time to cook the results. I can see the editorial in the Herald – “they asked us to release the results, we released them showing cdr Mugabe won by a huge margin, and now they are still complaining!”
No matter how the votes tally at this point, we know the election has been stolen. Stop asking for a release of the polls – ask for Mugabe to go – period.