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(NEWZIMBABWE) Elections now, or not before 2016

Elections now, or not before 2016
By Jonathan MoyoPolitics Last updated on: May 10, 2011

IF THERE is one good outcome of the unusual media and diplomatic excitement engineered by British and American mischief makers for illegal regime change in Zimbabwe since the March 31 Livingstone summit of SADC’s organ troika on politics, defence and security cooperation, it is that some home truths are now coming out in very loud and clear terms with only 12 days to go before the extraordinary SADC summit on the political and security situations in Madagascar and Zimbabwe scheduled for Windhoek, Namibia on May 20.

There are four key points that touch the soul like thorns in the flesh among the many home truths which are begging for the attention and they include the following:

It is now clear in the national interest that the next harmonised general election must be held this year in 2011 failure of which it should be held in 2016 and not at any other time in between. The current SADC focus on the so-called election roadmap which Morgan Tsvangirai takes to mean elections in 2012 or even in 2013 as understandably suggested by Cde Patrick Chinamasa is untenable not least because these suppositions are based on the fallacy that the 2008 election was disputed, when the fact is that it was inconclusive. There is a big difference between a disputed and an inconclusive election.

Apart from being retrogressive, the current focus on the election roadmap undermines the GPA and the constitution of Zimbabwe both which have clear election benchmarks that make for a better election roadmap than what’s being negotiated as part of a GPA that was negotiated, agreed and signed on September 15, 2008.

Furthermore, the focus on the election roadmap as the new GPA issue is attracting US, UK and EU interference and destabilisation of Zimbabwe under the guise of supporting a SADC-driven roadmap for free, fair and credible elections by the same countries that have imposed illegal economic sanctions against our country which they are refusing to remove.

All this is happening under the auspices of SADC when what Zimbabwe needs is to get out of a debilitating and indeed destructive election mode by holding the next harmonised general election either this year to usher in a government with a majority in Parliament as maintained by Zanu PF, or in 2016 in order to settle things now and enable the country to focus on public service delivery and economic recovery over the next five years without the threat of electoral destabilisation given the current poisonous environment since the Livingstone summit.

One of the greatest anomalies if not absurdities since the formation of the GPA government on February 13, 2009, is that the very same negotiators who negotiated the GPA that was agreed and signed on September 15, 2008, have continued to negotiate the same negotiated and agreed GPA to no end till this day. What on earth is the point of continuing to negotiate an agreement that has been negotiated, agreed and signed when the focus should be on its implementation by the government which was formed under it?

The charade of continuing negotiations on a done deal has been to the total detriment of the implementation of the GPA at great disservice to the public and to the embarrassment of the SADC guarantors of the GPA who have all along allowed the anomaly to continue by facilitating false negotiations that should have long ended on September 15, 2008.

It is a fact of life that negotiations that do not end or which run parallel to what has been negotiated, agreed and signed are by definition very dangerous to what has been agreed and signed and are unacceptable for that reason.

The misplaced current focus on elections, and their alleged roadmap fuelled by the endless GPA negotiations that should have ended on September 15, 2008, has ominously created a treacherous opportunity for weakening the State in Zimbabwe by rendering it vulnerable to hostile foreign interests in the vain hope of reversing the gains of the liberation struggle under the pathetic guise of security sector reforms authored by Zimbabwe’s enemies and peddled by the local media which they fund and control and which foolishly confuses its support from Western donors with market support.

What makes the foregoing an important wake-up call for Zimbabweans is that the US, UK and EU, who are currently operating within the dehumanising letter and spirit of how they operated against Africans during the slavery and colonial days, now want to use SADC to subvert our hard-won independence and sovereignty because of their recent experiences in Ivory Coast where the French government illegally used brutal force to install a puppet regime and in Libya where racist NATO forces are bombing, maiming and killing Libyans allegedly to protect the very same civilians they are killing and maiming while illegally drilling and selling that country’s oil.

Efforts are being made by former colonialists to use SADC against Zimbabwe in pursuit of regime change because they believe and indeed they can see that regional bodies in Africa such as SADC and continental bodies such as the African Union are at their weakest and this at a time when the United Nations itself has become a shameless appendage of the US under its treacherous Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who apparently cannot tell the difference between the US and the UN and who routinely behaves as if he comes from the moon after all.

These talking points have since the Livingstone summit of the SADC organ on politics, defence and security cooperation played out in a manner that is crying out for urgent reflection and action not only by SADC leaders as they prepare for their forthcoming summit which will be closely watched by the progressive world but also by Zimbabweans who now more than ever need to stand up and be counted in defence of their hard-won independence in the true Chimurenga tradition of the country’s ancestors and fallen liberation heroes.

Objectively-speaking, and in the national interest, it is now quite clear given the aftermath of the Livingstone debacle that Zimbabwe must hold its next harmonised general election in 2011 otherwise that election should be in 2016 and not at any time in between. The compelling reason for 2011, which defines and explains Zanu PF’s position as variously articulated in recent months, is that as a nation we need to do something important and meaningful about the fact that close to three years since the signing of the GPA in 2008, and more than two years since the formation of the GPA government, policy gridlock and dysfunctional governance have been the order of the day under endless GPA negotiations that have undermined and derailed the purpose of government.

This gridlock has cost the country dearly on the policy delivery front where the citizens, the business community and the rest of society rightly expect government to be a forum for address their concerns and not to be a self-indulgent negotiating forum for political parties that are supposed to be the government. It is mind-boggling that the GPA negotiations have been parallel to the government and not within it with the result of creating space for third parties to destabilise the State under the guise of negotiations.

Even worse, by allowing the negotiations to continue beyond the agreed and signed GPA, SADC now finds itself violating its own treaty and principles through dealing with political parties when it should be dealing with a Member State whose government comprises exactly the three parties that negotiated, agreed and signed the GPA. Yes, SADC can facilitate where there’s no recognised or legitimate government otherwise where there’s one, its engagement should be with that government and not with the political parties that form it.

The reason we have not had a properly functional government capable of policy delivery to ensure the necessary economic recovery is not only because our country has been in an election mode, which is fatal, but also because we have had endless GPA negotiations running parallel to the GPA government since the signing of the GPA in September 15, 2008. In effect, this has created two centres of government if not two governments: one through and under Cabinet and the other through negotiations under SADC facilitation whose logic and conduct are becoming indistinguishable from dictation.

As a result of this dangerous situation, the two MDC formations are now avoiding the Cabinet process which is based on the laws and Constitution of Zimbabwe and instead preferring to use the unregulated negotiation process under SADC facilitation which is open to subversion, intrigue, chicanery and all sorts of unmentionable hostile machinations. If the forthcoming SADC summit in Namibia does not come to terms with this very dangerous situation which risks setting an even more dangerous precedence in the region, it would have failed not only Zimbabweans but itself.

This is why a harmonised general election is desperately needed this year. If that is not possible or desirable for any good reason, then we must find a constitutional and legal way for regaining the lost three years since 2008 by allowing two years between now and 2013 to give breathing space for the constitution-making exercise to be concluded by then and to allow the wasted three years to be used after 2013 to entrench the institutions, processes and laws created by or under the new constitution.

Between now and 2016, the main focus and preoccupation of the country should not be GPA negotiations but service delivery to the people and economic recovery and stabilisation whose entrenchment would create conditions for free and fair elections in 2016 by which time everyone would have forgotten about the GPA and its prejudices. Meanwhile, all the Parliamentary vacancies should be filled by holding the by-elections with the chips falling where they may.

In the circumstances, the GPA negotiations on the electoral roadmap under SADC facilitation need a second thought. The time has come for SADC to consider auditing and reviewing its facilitation in Zimbabwe by, among other things contrasting it with the regional body’s long-going facilitation in Madagascar where there’s no recognised or a legitimate government as such. A policy change is clearly needed.

The fundamental point for SADC to examine now is whether it is legitimate and proper for it to go beyond facilitating conflicting political parties in a Member State to get them to form a government. As already pointed out, and SADC officials and diplomats in the organisation’s peace and security departments should take this point seriously for current and future purposes, once a legitimate or recognised government is formed in a Member State after a disagreement or stalemate of one sort or another where there’s no war, then surely SADC’s only point of contact and engagement should be that government and no other structure, not least structures of political parties.

It should be recalled that the stalemate that got SADC to be involved in Zimbabwe with specific reference to the GPA negotiations is not because the March 29, 2008, harmonised general election was disputed as often falsely claimed by dilettantes and illiterates in our midst, but because its outcome was inconclusive in that it did not produce an outright winner in Parliament with at least 106 out of 210 seats in the lower House of Assembly necessary to form a government. This is the only reason there was a stalemate, nothing else, not even the presidential election which Tsvangirai imagined he would win by boycotting.

The claim that the stalemate was due to a disputed election is therefore nonsense. As a matter of fact, there’s no country in SADC that has ever held an election whose outcome has not been disputed. It would thus be utter foolishness for SADC or anyone to force negotiations under the presumption that Zimbabweans should somehow be helped or made to hold an election whose outcome will not be disputed. Come to think about it, there’s no single election anywhere in the civilised democratic world whose outcome is not disputed. Indeed, the essence of democratic elections is that their conduct and outcome are always disputed as part of the democratic process. What is important is to ensure that there are constitutional and legal mechanisms for resolving the disputes that inevitably ensue after a democratic election. Even more important are constitutional and legal mechanisms for dealing with an inconclusive electoral outcome for purposes of forming a government.

Otherwise the proposition by promoters of the SADC mediated election roadmap that Zimbabwe should aim for a dispute-free election is a worthless pipedream with no example on earth.

The bottom line is that our next harmonised general election should be conducted in terms of the laws and Constitution of Zimbabwe given the GPA if it does not collapse. If any of the three parties that form the government want to change those laws, they should do so through Cabinet which is governed by our Constitution and not through a parallel and arguably illegal process of negotiations under an unregulated process of SADC facilitation which is open to hostile manipulation by the white world made of the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia and New Zealand whose racist hatred for our country and its liberation legacy is now legendary.

If the idea of negotiating a negotiated, agreed and signed agreement for the conduct of our next harmonised general election is bad, then doing the same to implement so- called security sector reforms is worse. Our security sector is not only the foundation of our national security but, only a paltry 31 years since our hard-won independence, it is also the only true custodian of the legacy of our liberation struggle at a time when the price tag for selling out is ever shifting with no shortage for bidders.

It is a fact that those who want to reform our security sector are associated with Rhodesians whose days are now numbered. It is hard to imagine that there’s any SADC leader who would like to see Zimbabwe’s security sector reformed to enable the dying Rhodesians to find a new lease of life in Zimbabwe some 31 years after our independence under the pretext of a treacherous election roadmap based on the very same universal right to vote which the Rhodesians and British colonialists denied us only 31 years ago.

Furthermore, it is hard to imagine that any SADC leader would want the security sector of his or her country reformed through extrajudicial negotiations which are neither constitutional nor legal. Proper security sector reforms must always be done and led by the security sector itself, and not by third parties operating outside the law under the treacherous cover of negotiations that are in fact not necessary at all.

If SADC leaders and officials have been following this issue as closely as they should be, they would be aware that the talk among merchants of regime change in the region is that a British template for toppling and changing governments in the region is emerging from the countries that make up the former Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, in that unlike elsewhere in the region the outcome of elections in these countries cannot be predicted.

The thinking behind this regime change proposition is that only these three countries in SADC are democratic if democracy is defined as the possibility of having an election which any party can win, including those that are foreign founded and funded. What is troubling about this neo-colonial proposition which should be food for thought for SADC countries, especially Zambia and Malawi, is that it is based on the presumption that the security sector must be neutralised, corrupted and compromised to the point of impotence during elections for the proposition to hold.

If there’s anyone out there who thinks that our comrades in the security sector sacrificed their lives during the liberation struggle in order to allow Rhodesians as well as media and political puppets of our erstwhile colonisers to subvert our independence and sovereignty through elections 31 years after the fact, then they need to have their heads examined by a competent psychiatrist for their madness because nothing of the sort will ever happen.

These puppets and their masters will not be allowed to reform something they did not form using the cover of GPA negotiations under misplaced SADC facilitation which the UK government apparently wants to use to dictate regime change in our country.

Finally, it is clear that the media and diplomatic excitement that has been seen since the SADC organ troika on defence, politics and security cooperation Livingstone summit is intended to transform the role of SADC in Zimbabwe from facilitation to intervention. Our leaders will have to reflect on this issue very seriously when they meet on May 20. Without prejudging anything, it is safe to say that any SADC flirtation with intervention in Zimbabwe would risk compromising the regional body’s standing whose handling of the situation in Madagascar has exposed its weaknesses.

This might be hard to swallow for some simple minds out there but, as sure as the sun will shine tomorrow, and from a well-considered academic point of view supported by published scholarly research and the historical record, SADC needs Zimbabwe under Zanu PF than Zimbabwe under Zanu PF needs SADC. That is food for thought which is neither a threat nor a promise to anyone.

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS (ZIMBABWE), JONATHAN MOYO

posted by MrK @ 4:51 AM