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(HERALD) Charumbira blasts West

Charumbira blasts West
Herald Reporter

PRESIDENT of the Council of Chiefs Chief Fortune Charumbira has castigated the West’s double standards on Zimbabwe and Ghana’s electoral laws that similarly call for a poll rerun after no absolute winner emerges in a presidential election.

In an interview before travelling to Ghana for that country’s presidential run-off after the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections, Chief Charumbira, who is a member of the Pan-African Parliament election observer mission, said the silence by the West over a similar case to the Zimbabwean situation raised a lot of eyebrows.

The December 7 election failed to produce an outright winner with neither ruling New Patriotic Front party candidate Nan Akufo-Addo nor main opposition leader John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress garnering more than 50 percent needed to avoid a run-off.

"We had a similar situation in Zimbabwe in March where the candidates failed to garner the required 50+1 percent and we had to go for a presidential run off, which the West does not want to recognise up to now," he said.

Chief Charumbira said it was surprising that Britain, the United States and their allies were also pushing for the March 29 election result to be used during dialogue between the country’s main political parties.

In the March 29 harmonised elections, which produced no absolute winner in the presidential poll, President Mugabe had 43,2 percent of the vote while Mr Morgan Tsvangirai had 47,8 percent.

Independent candidates Simba Makoni and Landton Toungana were the other presidential contestants in the elections.

According to the Electoral Act, when none of the contestants fails to garner more than 50 percent of the vote, a second round ballot between the two candidates with the highest number of votes should be held.

President Mugabe won the run-off against Mr Tsvangirai who tried, albeit in vain, to withdraw from the election at the 11th hour.

Local electoral laws are similar to Ghana’s, which led to the presidential election run-off pitting Akufo-Addo and Atta Mills.

However, Chief Charumbira decried the silence of the Western world, which did not take time to condemn the Zimbabwean poll when it headed for a run-off, but was conspicuously silent in the case of Ghana.

"The situation in Ghana is almost like our experiences in the March 29 harmonised elections and the subsequent June 27 presidential run off.

"While the West made a lot of noise after the hung presidential results and cried foul when President Mugabe convincingly trounced Tsvangirai in the run-off, they have suddenly gone quiet.

"Even some of the violent cases (in Ghana) were also worse than what was observed in Zimbabwe during the two elections but would you hear the West saying anything?" Chief Charumbira said although violent acts were not widespread, there were instances where vehicles were petrol bombed while campaign posters were torn off walls and poles as rival groups fought.

Labels: CHIEFS, COLOUR REVOLUTIONS

posted by MrK @ 6:51 PM