Local human rights watchdog, Crisis Coalition in Zimbabwe (CiCZ) says Zimbabwe is not ready to hold free, fair and credible elections given the escalating incidents of politically-motivated violence, among other factors.
Cicz national director Blessing Vava said current events do not point to a country ready for fair elections.
He told a South Africa-based radio station recently:
If you look at the prevailing conditions, they do not point out a country ready for free, fair and credible elections. The violence we have witnessed during the by-elections in areas such as Insiza and the continuous arrest of opposition activists such as Job Sikhala currently languishing in remand prison without trial casts doubt on the credibility of the upcoming elections.
What we are seeing now is a playing field tilted towards the ruling party with the opposition party not being allowed to organise rallies.
Vava also indicated that the current controversy around the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) delimitation report was another pointer to the nation’s unpreparedness.
Political violence has been escalating since late 2021 amid concerns that this year’s elections might be bloody as the ruling ZANU PF is “willing to do whatever it takes to retain power.”
Machiavelli · 2 years ago
Organisationally, the country is far from being ready for elections. ZEC is in shambles- the voters roll is not ready, it's not transparent and is not even available to all stakeholders. Why? Only ZANU and ZEC know.
With less than 6 months to the expiry of the current Parliament, no date has been set. Everything is through innuendo and pre supposition.
The voters roll is not available, and is subject to a lot of criticism and failure by ZEC to publish it leads to intrigue.
Legislation conducive for free and fair elections doesn't exist. CCC has since prior to 2018 been calling for electoral reform, and shas lent a deaf ear to th8se entreaties. The cosmetic framework passed by Parliament only serves to disenfranchise certain people instead of creating a conducive environment for fair plebiscite.
Financially the country is I. Dire straits and hasn't allocated enough resources for elections. I am not sure whether those that participated in the census were eventually paid. Those involved in the run up to delimitation are still to be paid.
The largest opposition party, the CCC is financially incapacitated. Not only is it thwarted from raising funds abroad (the only source that is awash with donor funding), but it is prohibited from state funding due to judicial capture. The Luke Malaba Supreme Court has denied it of its rightful share of state funding
The political climate is polarised. Only ZANU has a free reign to campaign. Maybe its opposition surrogate- MDC-T- is given a modicum of space, I suppose only because it is a ZANU hunting dog.
I could go on ad infinitum, but the long and short of it is that ZANU is making it difficult for anyone else to challenge its hold on power irrespective of its mammoth failures economically and everything else.
Quelle ville?