Election observers must look, but not play

NEAR the middle of next year Zimbabwe will hold its five-yearly Presidential, Parliamentary and local government harmonised elections, and already it is becoming apparent that while many are genuinely supporting Zimbabweans in their right to choose who they want to govern their country, others want their favoured candidates to win.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission runs our elections, maintains our voters roll and delimits our constituencies, and it must do all of this without interference although there are prescribed routes that must be followed should anyone disagree with a decision.

Those routes generally involve judges, or at least end in front of judges.

All this is laid down in our Constitution, the one that we all agreed by huge majorities in 2013 would be the basis of all our law. In fact transferring any ZEC function would almost certainly require a referendum.

ZEC has to follow the Electoral Act. This is the detailed law, converting the outline given in the Constitution into those pages of nitty gritty. That law has to conform, in letter and spirit, with the Constitution and in its present form represents a wide range of consensus and agreement.

It was modified by amendments that had support from both Government and opposition Parliamentarians, being one of those laws where everyone thought that general agreement was a good starting point.

As President Mnangagwa said recently, our elections are monitored by outsiders. As with all members of SADC and the African Union, Zimbabwe has signed onto agreements, which are basically treaties even if not called that, whereby we commit ourselves to honest elections that reflect the will of our adult citizens.

Being practical organisations both SADC and the AU are permitted to monitor all elections in the region and continent, just to make sure and, more importantly, help reassure voters that their will is the one being followed.

We have to accept these monitors, and obviously we welcome their presence.

Neither SADC in Southern African nor the AU in the continent is that fussed over who wins, so long as they win genuinely. When an incumbent President or party wins, everyone sends their routine congratulations; when an opposition leader or party wins, everyone sends their routine congratulations. The messages are basically the same.

If there is some dispute, almost all African countries have designated courts that can hear the dispute, in public and even on live television as we saw in Zimbabwe in 2018, and come to a conclusion very quickly.

SADC and AU generally urge everyone to remain cool and calm in any dispute and let the independent judges, in the full glare of the public hearings, look at the evidence and reach a conclusion. Occasionally a result is overturned.

SADC has seen that in Malawi with a rerun of a Presidential poll ordered, but that just shows that the systems work.

The neighbours and the continent as a whole obviously have a deep interest in making sure that proper elections are held and that there is general acceptance of the results, regardless of who wins and who loses, and there is always a winner and a loser in a contested election.

Th e reason is obvious. Africa has a lot of problems, but political instability is man-made and need not be one of them.

In any case neighbours can be pretty blunt since everyone recognises that they generally just want a country free of man-made problems on their border and do not have an axe to grind.

Many others outside politics feel the same. One good example is many of our churches. Ministers and preachers often have something to say before a poll. Few endorse any candidate, but most urge their congregants to take the duty of voting seriously, follow their conscience and act peacefully. Sometimes these things need to be said.

Anyone giving this sort of advice is genuine and reminding voters that they are the heirs of a long struggle to get those rights and in any case have a natural right to exercise is not contentious.

Most NGOs have nothing to do with elections, and just watch them like everyone else without getting involved.

If there is a new winner they will make contact should their work require this, and if the incumbents win they will maintain contact, should their work requires this. In other words they are not trying to manipulate results, but often need to work with the winners, whoever they are.

Politics being politics many supporters of single issue groups, anything from preserving wetlands to looking after the interests of schoolchildren, like to push for commitments from candidates before the polls.

The perfect result for most of them is have every candidate in an area backing their stand, so regardless of who the voters choose they can turn up at the victory celebration and start discussing how the promise will be implemented.

But there are some who have preconceived ideas, or who desperately want a particular person or party to win, even if they themselves are not a citizen of Zimbabwe and so really do not have a say.

These should follow the lead of SADC and the AU, and watch from the sidelines and congratulate the winner chosen by the citizens, rather than try and claim that if their favourite person loses then the election was faulty.

Even worse are those who try and manipulate the voting and the voters in a foreign land, and that regrettably happens in and for Zimbabwe.

We have people who would only accept a result if, for example, the opposition win, yet they themselves are more than eager if in Government elsewhere for their party to win election after election.

President Mnangagwa rightly states that Zimbabwe has nothing to hide, and so intrinsically there is no real objection to anyone being allowed to observe our elections. But the word we need to stress is “observe”.

Looking on is fine, being an informed spectator is great. But those observing and those spectating are not participants, and must not move off the terraces onto the playing field.

The participants are Zimbabwean citizens exercising their rights. A lot of people died to give them that right, and they need to be allowed to exercise their rights, without having their arms twisted or people using them as pawns in a complex chess game.

And Zimbabweans themselves, regardless of who they support, should refuse to be manipulated or even allow anyone to try.