By Patrick Guramatunhu- “Here we go!” I sighed! The minute I saw the name Eddie Cross as the author of the article in Zimeye. I expected nonsense from him and nonsense I got!
“Mr. Mnangagwa could then claim, for the first time, to be the legitimate leader of Government, even though his victory was with a tiny majority. It was only at that moment that we saw a new dispensation of sorts emerge in the form of the first really Mnangagwa controlled Cabinet,” stated Eddie Cross.
How can Mnangagwa ever be “the legitimate leader of government” when the whole election process was flawed and illegal? The regime denied 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora a vote. ZEC failed to produce a verified voters’ roll, etc.
Mr Cross was a senior member of the MDC that had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms during the 2008 to 2013 GNU which would ended Zanu PF’s carte blanche powers to rig elections. MDC leaders were warned not to take part in 2013 and then 2018 elections without first implementing the reforms. They would not listen out of greed, as one MDC leader, David Coltart, confessed.
“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the (2013) elections,” confessed Coltart in his book.
“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.”
The EU, Americans, the Commonwealth and everyone else with any democratic credential worth talking about who observed the July 2018 Zimbabwe elections dismissed them as a farce.
“The electoral commission lacked full independence and appeared to not always act in an impartial manner. The final results as announced by the Electoral Commission contained numerous errors and lacked adequate traceability, transparency and verifiability,” stated the EU Election Observer Mission final report.
“As such, many aspects of the 2018 elections in Zimbabwe failed to meet international standards.”
Mnangagwa was able to count this by pointing out that all Zimbabwe’s opposition parties had participated in the July 2018 elections regardless of the 3 million in the diaspora denied the vote, no verified voters roll, etc., etc. And, crown it all, all those who did participate have all endorsed the process as having been free, fair and credible.
Chamisa has challenged the presidential race result but that was on one very specific aspect, the vote counting by ZEC. The Constitutional Court has since ruled in favour of Mnangagwa. Having accepted ZEC’s authority and conduct in the elections process it is nonsensical for Chamisa to reject the authority and judgement of ZEC’s sister judiciary institution, the Constitutional Court.
It is worth noting here that Mr Eddie Cross, is a senior MDC leader and colleague of Chamisa, and he has endorsed Mnangagwa’s elections as legitimate and legal.
Chamisa and the other MDC leaders have agreed to endorse Mnangagwa as legitimate if he agreed to share out the spoils of power with MDC.
“Holocaust denial, the denial of the systematic genocidal killing of approximately six million Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, is illegal in 16 European countries and Israel. Many countries also have broader laws that criminalize genocide denial,” explained Wikipedia
“Of the countries that ban Holocaust denial, some, such as Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Romania, were among the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and many of these also ban other elements associated with Nazism, such as the expression of Nazi symbols.”
One can understand why these nation passed such laws; the genocides took place, these are historic facts and the individual nations were sick and tired of being dragged back over the same issues by the few who refused to accept the truth for whatever reasons!
Zimbabwe is stuck in this political and economic mess because the country has failed to remove this corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF regime from office these last 40 years. The party has rigged elections denying the people a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
So to get out of this mess, the country needs to hold free, fair and credible elections and for that to happen we need to implement the democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging elections.
It is therefore very frustrating Zanu PF blatantly rigs elections and the country’s opposition politicians are the ones, for selfish reasons, are the once siding with Zanu PF in falsely claiming the elections were free, fair and credible. It was bad enough that Eddie Cross and company sold-out in failing to implement the reforms during the GNU it is intolerable that they are now propping up this illegitimate Zanu PF dictatorship by participating in flawed and illegal elections.
The people of Zimbabwe must have stop supporting MDC and the rest of the Zimbabwe opposition party who participate in elections with no reforms implemented. These politicians are no longer fighting for free and fair elections with us, ordinary people; they are now content with rigged elections as long as they get some of the spoils of power.
The international community must add Zimbabwe’s opposition candidate on the sanctions’ list because they are now as guilty of the rigged elections as the Zanu PF politicians themselves.
We can agree to differ on many things but not on truth, reality and facts. After 40 years of rigged elections and with the nation is serious economic and political trouble as a consequence, we cannot afford to be wasting another minute arguing on what constitutes free, fair and credible elections!
So those who continue to deny Zanu PF rigged July 2018 elections must be chastised, period! They must be slapped with targeted sanctions regardless which side of the political divide the come from.