IEC REPLACES ELECTIONS WITH REFERENDUM ABOLISHING CHAIR OF STATE

There has been considerable outrage about the Independent Electoral Commission officials visiting Zimbabwe to benchmark with the oddly- named Zimbabwe Electoral Commission ahead of this year’s general election. The reason for the outrage is that, since it came into being in 2004, ZEC is alleged to have organised sham election after sham election – which is too much to ask for a body that doesn’t even have “independent” in its name. The fact of the matter is that ZEC is not even an election management body. That is because Zimbabwe has only held elections once – in 1980 when the country became independent and all contestants were on equal footing. Thereafter, the Electoral Supervisory Commission ( ZEC’s predecessor) organised what this column has rightly called referenda to merely gauge support for the ruling ZANU- PF. This detail is very important because it reveals what the IEC plans to do for what was supposed to be this year’s general election. If the IEC was organising a general election, it would have benchmarked with an election management body that has supervised free and fair elections – like South Africa’s own IEC. What IEC officials did instead was travel 1070 km to benchmark with a referenda management body in Harare when they could easily have travelled 400 km to Jo- burg to benchmark with what is possibly the most credible election management body in Africa. There are only two plausible explanations for this development. Firstly, the IEC is organising a referendum and as far as benchmarking goes, the obvious choice is SADC’s main referenda management body in Harare. Secondly, the 45 million Zimbabwean migrants living in Botswana will be participating in the upcoming referendum. There is no way that Zimbabwean migrants will not participate in a referendum developed by their own country. Besides, the opposition has long warned us that the BDP government plans to use Zimbabweans migrants to prolong its stay in power. The Harare trip confirms that.

The Leader of the Opposition, Dithapelo Keorapetse, should be careful what he wishes for. Contributing to a parliamentary debate, the Selebi Phikwe West MP said that parliament should abolish the Chair of State, being the ceremonial chair that the president, who is himself an MP, occupies when he attends parliament. Abolishing the Chair would mean that the president joins the rest of the MPs and participates in debates. It also means that he will have to stand up when he makes a contribution. Standing up is the problem because the ceaseless chaos in the opposition necessarily means that it will be decades before the opposition that Keorapetse is the parliamentary leader of assumes official power. It is likely that when that happens, a 95- year old Keorapetse will himself be the leader of the opposition party that will replace the BDP. “A 95- year old Keorapetse” because the main opposition party, the Umbrella for Democratic Change, has instituted an apparent lifepresidency tradition. At that advanced age, President Keorapetse won’t be able to stand for longer than two minutes and would regret having come up with the idea to abolish the Chair of State.