The Herald (Zimbabwe)

Chamisa clutching at straws

- Editor-in-Chief

WITH the clock ticking furiously to Thursday, when the window on electoral challenges lapses, MDC-Alliance leader Mr Nelson Chamisa has turned his attention to “environmen­tal issues” that have no bearing on vote-counting, amid reports he has failed to come up with the V11 forms he wanted to use as a basis for a court challenge.

Cde Mnangagwa romped to victory with 50,8 percent of the votes cast to Mr Chamisa’s 44,3 percent in the 23-candidate presidenti­al contest.

Smarting from the drubbing, Mr Chamisa told his supporters that he would challenge the results in court, premising his suit on V11 forms from polling stations.

Mr Chamisa’s spokespers­on has since confirmed that his boss did not have polling agents in at least 200 polling stations and thus does not have the V11 forms.

Furthermor­e, scores of agents have refused to hand over the forms because the party has failed to pay them for their work.

A V11 form is an original document carrying results from a polling station and is signed by agents of all contesting parties.

After signing, the data is recorded on a V23 form and then forwarded to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s National Results Centre.

Because the V11 forms cannot be found, sources close to developmen­ts said Mr Chamisa wanted to press ahead with a court challenge for the sake of placating his constituen­cy, which is why he was turning his attention to alleged bias by the public media, and food and inputs distributi­on.

Presidenti­al spokesman Mr George Charamba scoffed at the alliance’s fixation with the distributi­on of inputs, saying President Mnangagwa would never put good electoral ratings ahead of people’s livelihood­s.

‘‘The farming season does not delay because Zimbabwe is going to the polls. It’s pretty pre-set and the stomach knows no holiday. The focus of the President is on building a food-secure nation, first and foremost, but also to create a good base for raw material for industry.

‘‘To expect him to delay distributi­on of inputs for purposes of getting a good electoral rating at the expense of a grumbling stomach is sheer madness, maybe those who find fault with the distributi­on of inputs are working with a Western climate, we are in the southern hemisphere - specifical­ly in the savanna - and please we are not a maritime climate,’’ Mr Charamba said.

‘‘Once more, this highlights the problem of what scholars have termed ‘disembodie­d knowledge’ where electoral standards don’t talk to climatic and economic exigencies,’’ Mr Charamba said.

Zimbabwe has historical­ly had delays in getting inputs to farmers on time, prompting President Mnangagwa to give an order earlier this year that the inputs must get to the farmers before October when the summer cropping season begins in earnest.

The MDC-Alliance also attributes its loss to alleged bias by the public media, yet Zimpapers publicatio­ns covered alliance rallies along with most of the other parties that were on the campaign trail.

Mr Charamba, who is also Informatio­n, Media and Broadcasti­ng Services Permanent Secretary; said it was ironic that some observer reports zeroed in on alleged public media bias while turning a blind eye to the overt bias of private media.

‘‘As for the issue to do with the public media, one would have thought that the real talking point to fair-minded observers would have been the fact that Section 61(4) discrimina­tes within an industry by placing the burden of what in fact are profession­al standards on a small section of the sector. You did not need to be a media expert to notice that the values of objectivit­y and balance shot through the window in respect of the private media, who were rooting for a candidate, thereby raising an industry-wide challenge in terms of election coverage. This is an area which policy and lawmakers will have to address post-July 30,’’ he said.

The MDC-Alliance’s fixation with environmen­tal issues, Mr Charamba said, had no bearing on voting totals.

‘‘Anyway, all this does not change the count. The terrible thing about an election is that it’s a numericall­y-exact science, so you can’t import abstracts to that which is numerical,’’ he added.

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