A United Nations official on Tuesday indirectly rejected claims by Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa that he was in talks with the UN to supervise Zimbabwe’s general elections next year to ensure transparency and fairness.
Chamisa, who rejected the outcome of the 2018 presidential election, citing rigging allegations, has in recent weeks claimed the CCC was arranging UN supervision of the 2023 harmonised elections.
He made the latest claim at his party’s “Thank You” rally in Chinhoyi on Sunday.
UN Resident and Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Zimbabwe, Edward Kallon, told New Ziana that the UN required a mandate from either the General Assembly or its Security Council to supervise elections in a member country.
He said the UN last supervised an election in 1989 in Namibia when the country gained independence. Said Kallon:
UN electoral supervision requires a mandate from the General Assembly or the Security Council.
It has been undertaken in the context of decolonization, and at the request of the relevant government.
The most recently UN supervised elections were in Namibia in 1989 in a peculiar context.
Kallon said technical assistance was now the most common type of support given to member states by the UN. He said:
The United Nations provides different types of electoral assistance. Technical assistance is the most common form of support provided to Member States.
In Zimbabwe, UNDP has been providing support to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission since 2016, through the ZIM-ECO (ZEC capacity-building) project, which provides technical support to the electoral process in Zimbabwe.