Plot to hijack 2018 elections

THE United Nations Development Programme’s political department is working with local opposition groups to hijack the outcome of Zimbabwe’s 2018 harmonised elections, it has emerged.

Senior State officials told our Harare Bureau that the department was behind the National Electoral Reform Agenda’s planned protests to push for the UNDP unit to run the elections. In 2016, Zimbabwe and the UNDP signed an agreement under which the latter would procure biometric voter registration kits for the elections.

However, sources said, Government cancelled that deal and resolved to go it alone after gathering evidence that the UNDP political department was planning to declare the West’s preferred candidate the poll winner regardless of what the actual vote outcome would be.

It is believed that the same tactic was used in Cote d’Ivoire in 2010 where Mr Laurent Gbagbo lost to opposition leader Mr Alassane Outtara in the UN-supervised presidential election. UN communications specialist for Zimbabwe Mr Sirak Gebrehiwot could not be reached for comment on his mobile phone yesterday, but a reliable source said: “Soon after Government decided to buy the kits, the leader of the UNDP flew to New York to solve the equation and they decided that there would be three scenarios.

“Firstly, Government proceeds to buy the kits. The second scenario was to continue agitating for the UNDP to buy the kits. This was going to be done by enlisting opposition parties for that purpose. The third scenario was to attack the process itself. Government got wind of this plan which has similar makings of what happened in Cote d’Ivoire. The idea was to make noise over the process and then get the international community to intervene.”

MDC-T spokesperson Mr Obert Gutu insisted yesterday that they wanted the UNDP to procure the kits.

But Zec chairperson Justice Rita Makarau said opposition elements under Nera had picked the commission as “a soft target” and was trying to draw it into matters outside its mandate. She said there was nothing wrong with Government procuring the kits, adding that MDC-T was being hypocritical by attacking a process it helped create.