Maravi

ZANU-PF: accept defeat and hand over power

ZANU-PF: accept defeat and hand over power
By Editor
Saturday April 26, 2008 [04:00]

THE inordinate delay in releasing the results of the March 29 elections has totally discredited the whole of Zimbabwe's electoral process. A week's delay, in the circumstances might have been understandable. Two weeks’ delay might have been excusable. Three weeks’ delay might have raised a lot of questions and some controversy. But a month’s delay has rendered the results of this process totally unacceptable. The only way these results may be accepted as credible is if they make opposition MDC the absolute winner.

Initially, many people were a bit more understanding and sympathetic to the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission's problems given the magnitude and complexity of conducting four elections in one. But for all the difficulties and unavoidable deficiencies and inefficiencies, there is no good reason for them to delay announcing the results for almost a month.

It can be legitimately argued that the court proceedings initiated by MDC might have further contributed to this delay. But it's today more than a week since this impediment was removed. Recounting votes in two or so dozens of constituencies should take only, and at most two or three days.

This delay has raised a lot of questions about the independence and integrity of Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission. It has also raised serious questions needing honest answers about the true reasons for this apparent unrealistic delay.

And one would not be wrong to conclude that ZANU-PF and President Robert Mugabe lost these elections in a definitive manner and are trying to buy time to alter things in their favour or to pave way for their exit in a manner desirable to themselves because they were totally not ready for that type of result.

This delay has cost ZANU-PF and President Mugabe all the international support they had prior to these elections. It is not an exaggeration to say that the majority of the Zambian people and Africans in general were untrusting and unsupportive of MDC.

They saw MDC as a political party of the former white racist Rhodesians and their imperialist supporters in Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. This may not be desirable, but that's the way things stood.

But the behaviour of ZANU-PF and President Mugabe over the last four weeks seems to have changed all this. Even if they manage to alter things and declare themselves the winners of these elections, it seems it will be impossible for them to govern. They have allowed their opponents to gain the upper hand without doing much. It is really their own undoing.

But it's difficult to understand why ZANU-PF and President Mugabe went into these elections without being clear about what they would do if they lost. You can't organise an election and take part in it and then fail to accept its outcome. It is ridiculous for a ruling party to accuse the opposition of rigging elections that were conducted by itself or under its leadership and supervision.

If this is true, then this is a serious indictment on its competence, on its ability to continue in government.
If they were not ready to face MDC in an election contest, they shouldn't have accepted to have elections last month. At least Frederick Chiluba was very honest about it in 1996.

When Chiluba was amending the Zambian constitution to enable him bar Dr Kenneth Kaunda from contesting that year's elections, a friend of his asked him why he shouldn't just allow Dr Kaunda to contest and defeat him neatly, cleanly and conclusively and confine him thereafter to a permanent retirement. Chiluba's response was: "What about if he wins?" This is the way Dr Kaunda's political comeback was frustrated.

Everything in life has got limits. Even elections can only be manipulated or rigged within certain limits. There is need for ZANU-PF and President Mugabe to accept that for now MDC, and probably imperialism, has defeated them. At least on this front - the electoral front.

They will not be the first liberation movement, the first independence political party to be defeated in this way. UNIP and Dr Kaunda had their baptism in this almost 17 years ago. They didn't die. They didn't attempt to rig elections and cling on to power. They graciously and magnanimously handed over power to a political party - the MMD - which they knew very well was being financed and supported by the imperialists.

The Sandinistas in Nicaragua were also similarly removed from power by a political party supported and financed by the United States after almost a decade of resisting to be overthrown or removed from power by the United States' funded and supported contras. Again, the Sandinistas magnanimously handed over power to the United States puppets in Nicaragua.

They understood very well that they were defeated on this front but that did not mean the end of things. They understood that no revolution ever comes to an end and that all revolutionaries have the duty to keep its ideas, principles and goals alive. Even if the Sandinistas were to try to close off prospects for future progress, they wouldn't be able to do so.

Nobody controls the future - because humanity has no alternative to meeting the future, has no hope but the changes, advances and improvements that the future may bring. The Sandinistas didn't return to the mountains again, but they were confident that, with their faith, the mountains will one day return to them. And today they are back in power in Nicaragua, continuing where they left.

Above all, they have the support and the electoral mandate of the Nicaraguan people - patriotic, courageous, revolutionary people who fought hard to throw off the USA's supported and funded Somoza dictatorship, to begin a revolutionary process, to keep struggling in disadvantageous conditions and to recover from setbacks.

ZANU-PF and President Mugabe have to accept their fate. If they are true revolutionaries, they should hand over power to the winners in last month's elections because revolutionaries are honest people, don't cheat and don't lie.

It is time for them to realise that our lives teach us who we are. They should learn the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own, then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist, metamorphic picture they have always carried about is rather more vulnerable.

Yet they seem to think that they must cling with all their might to the chameleon, that chimera, that shape-shifter, their own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown instinct, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges them into contradiction and paradox, so be it; they have lived in that messy ocean all their lives. They have fished in it for their art.

ZANU-PF and President Mugabe should face the issue of their electoral defeat head-on and deal with it. They should realise that the events of the last four weeks profoundly disappointed their supporters, and disgusted many others.

People need a rest from them, and they need time to reflect and listen and come to understand things better than they have been of late. They certainly need to do a lot about themselves. They need better and different organisations.

Revolutionaries - which we believe every person who fights for the independence of his country is, although there is a higher form of being a revolutionary - are patriots who wish to see their country succeed, move forward.

You will not see them gloat over national reverses, nor talk down their successes. They shouldn't behave like non-patriots who sought to defeat them on the back of national failure, economic and political blockade and other sorts of sanctions when there were sufficient grounds without that to argue for their removal.

Today their opponents, well funded and politically supported by imperialists, look very strong and confident. But problems lie ahead. The wheel of fortune turns and that which once appeared fresh, with the passing of time goes to seed.

What ZANU-PF and President Mugabe need is humility, magnanimity. Opportunities there will be. Their time will come again if they work hard and are honest and true to the Zimbabwean people.

It is therefore very important that they give the opposition its electoral victory and hand over power immediately. There is need for them to appreciate the fact that elections are the central institution of democratic representative governments. Why? This is because, in a democracy, the authority of the government derives solely from the consent of the governed.

The principal mechanism for translating that consent into governmental authority is the holding of free and fair elections. And democratic elections are not merely symbolic - they are competitive, periodic, inclusive, definitive elections in which the chief decision-makers in a government are selected by citizens.

And democracies thrive on openness and accountability, with one very important exception: the act of voting itself. At the same time, the protection of the ballot box and tallying of vote totals must be conducted as openly as possible, so that citizens are confident that the results are accurate and that the government does, indeed, rest upon their consent.

Democratic elections, after all, are not a fight for survival, but a competition to serve. No matter who wins, both sides must agree to cooperate in solving the common problems of the society.

The losers, now in the political opposition, should know that they will not lose their lives or go to jail. On the contrary, the opposition should continue to participate in public life, with the knowledge that its role is essential in any democracy worthy of the name.

There is no alternative, the results of last month's elections in Zimbabwe need to be given to those who won the elections and close the whole process and wait for the next elections. Defeats, setbacks are inevitable aspects of life - especially of political life.

Labels: ELECTIONS, MDC, NEOCOLONIALISM, ZANU-PF, ZEC, ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 3:12 AM