Zim police arrest MDC 3 for ‘illegally possessing poll forms’
HARARE: As the post-election mood gets tense in Zimbabwe before the official announcement of the results, the police have arrested three Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) members for allegedly trying to, at best, discredit the election process, or, at worst, rig the polls.
Senior assistant police commissioner Charity Charamba said the three had been arrested for allegedly being found in possession of forms used by Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) officials to collate the election results.
MDC spokesman Douglas Mwonzora denounced the arrests as a politically motivated witchhunt. But Charamba claimed the arrest of MDC regional chief electoral officer Annah Bvute, party activist Phillip Mabika and another unnamed member, was proof that MDC leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who has repeatedly accused President Robert Mugabe of trying to fix the elections, was the one who wanted to rig them.
“No wonder the MDC leader, during the campaign, indicated that he was going to announce the results himself and he has been singing this rigging tune all along. Contrary to his utterances, indications and evidence on the ground seem to suggest that it’s MDC-T that is trying to rig the election.
“This is a huge scam aimed at facilitating the premature announcement of the results by an unauthorised individual,” Charamba said. She denied that the police targeted MDC activists for political reasons, saying officers
This is a huge scam aimed at facilitating the premature announcement of results
had the duty to arrest all “criminal offenders” irrespective of their political affiliation.
She added that the police acted after receiving a complaint from the ZEC, because “no political parties or any other body are authorised to be in possession of these forms” except electoral officials.
But MDC supporters, like businessman Simbarashe Moyo, are not convinced that the police acted purely in furtherance of the law.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights this week accused the police of randomly arresting political activists, NGO officials and those offering the victims legal support in order to keep them away from their constituencies in the run-up to the presidential, parliamentary and local government elections.
The arrests of the three MDC members come less than a week after Zimbabwe Republic Police arrested MDC deputy national chairman Morgan Komichi after he pointed out that marked special vote ballot papers had been found in a bin in Harare days after police and soldiers voted.
Komichi, who is deputy transport minister and also Tsvangirai’s chief electoral agent, is believed to be still in custody.
Charamba previously said Komichi would not be released until he revealed the source of his “evidence”.
According to MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa, Komichi has so far refused to do so in order to protect the source from a possible jail sentence. This was because it’s a criminal offence for third parties to be illegally in possession of election materials.