The ball is now in SADC’s court
David Coltart
On July 20, President Mugabe, in his speech marking the opening of parliament, announced that a number of electoral reforms would be introduced that would level the electoral playing field. Mugabe and Zanu PF disingenuously claimed that these reforms (including the establishment of a new Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, the reduction of polling days from two to one and the counting of votes at polling stations) would address the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)’s demands.
As we said at the time, these proposed reforms only partly address our minimum standards pertaining to improving the transparency and fairness of procedures governing the polling day. On the whole, they are woefully inadequate and fail to even touch on the crucial issue of opening up the political space and ending political violence.
What the ruling party’s proposals clearly demonstrate is that they view an election as an event as opposed to a process.
It is this politically expedient definition of what constitutes an election that received an unequivocal “yellow card” at the Sadc summit in Mauritius. The comprehensive set of guidelines and principles that were agreed upon in Mauritius captured the essential elements of our blueprint, “Restore”, in particular the recognition that a free and fair election is not possible when the political space has all but been closed down. This was a symbolic victory for the MDC.
When Mugabe signed the protocol he was technically committing himself to implementing the MDC’s minimum standards. In theory at least, our “yellow card” in the form of Restore produced a very positive result indeed. The reality, however, is different. In the immediate aftermath of his return from Mauritius, Mugabe and his regime quashed any hopes that they would act in the spirit and letter of the agreement by gazetting a draft NGO Bill containing provisions which continue the government’s determination to crush all organised centres of opinion opposed to the regime.