This article was written by Againstprof Makuyana on 20 July, at 18 : 53 PM
Last week l sent an email to Professor Susan Booysen asking if there are any latest poll-findings and predictions about Zimbabwe elections from Freedom House, a polling organisation that she chairs.
She is a fellow and highly respected lecturer here at Witwatersrand University and she teaches political science to PhD students.
I pretended to be an MDC supporter so that she wouldn’t lie to me and this is how the email exchange went:
“I am an investor who is planning to invest in Zimbabwe if Dr. Richard Morgan Tsvangirai wins the forthcoming elections.
“I acknowledge the last poll-finding you conducted in February 2013 and I am now asking if you have any latest poll-findings on Zimbabwe elections because we are planning to go and invest in Zimbabwe as soon as Tsvangirai wins.”
She responded after three days and told me that there were latest poll-findings from Freedom House, but they were still to be verified. I insisted that she gave me a clue as to who was leading that poll, but all she could say was that the poll findings would be out for public consumption by Wednesday this week.
By Wednesday, I checked the Freedom House website, but there was nothing published. I decided to send her an email asking why the results were not yet out again after waiting for another week.
This is what she had to say to me in her email response:
“I humbly apologise for not coming back to you over that issue. I received the poll-prediction results that initially showed Mugabe leading three weeks ago, but I ordered our team to either look into the statistical-feasibility or re-do the whole research. They chose the later on the grounds that a lot has changed since all the political parties have already started campaigning and most people who didn’t disclose their political preference are now politically active.
“They then sent me the latest poll-finding this Monday which showed the gap between Mugabe and Tsvangirai increasing by more than 10% in favour of Mugabe. Another shocking political player is Welshman Ncube whose support has increased from less than 1% to 6.9%. It appears as if Mugabe is no longer easy to defeat. I have already advised the MDC-T to either pull out of the race or discredit the entire electoral process because if the elections continue, there is very little chances for Tsvangirai. He made a lot of political blunders during the past three years and that destroyed his brand whilst renovating Mugabe’s.”
I then asked her (Professor Booysen) why Freedom House did not release the results and she said they had been instructed by the American Embassy in South Africa never to release the results of the poll-findings.
However, she did not give me the reasons why the American Embassy in South Africa did not want the results released.
Zanu-PF is going to win even if they sit on the poll-findings. The reality is coming down on 31 July 2013.
We know the MDC wants to dispute the election results and that is why they do not want these poll-predictions published. They know that it will be difficult to say Zanu-PF has rigged the election when every poll prediction was showing a Zanu-PF win.
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This article was published with consent from Againstprof Makuyana.
Labels: 2013 ELECTIONS (ZW), FREEDOM HOUSE, SUSAN BOOYSEN, WELSHMAN NCUBE
posted by MrK @ 9:05 PM
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