EDITORIAL COMMENT: Heed the President’s call for peaceful, credible elections President Emmerson Mnangagwa
President Emmerson Mnangagwa

President Emmerson Mnangagwa

Elections will be held in the next five months.

Political parties are at various stages of preparing for the harmonised elections when some five million Zimbabweans would elect their councillor, National Assembly representative and president.

At the administrative level, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has just finished a biometric voter registration mop-up exercise that was preceded by a blitz held between October 10 and December 19, 2017.

At political party level, it appears Zanu-PF is leading the charge for the harmonised elections.  The party already has a presidential candidate, President Emmerson Mnangagwa. It will soon hold primary elections to choose cadres who will represent it at ward and constituency levels.  Also, there is a lot of activity across the party’s 10 provinces with meetings being held to reinvigorate the party at the grassroots. President Mnangagwa has held highly subscribed rallies in Mashonaland Central and Midlands provinces.

At his inauguration in November, he made free and fair elections one of his key messages. At all rallies and meetings the President has addressed thereafter, he has been preaching tolerance and that the Government and his party, Zanu-PF are committed to free, fair, credible and non-violent elections.

He restated this position while officially opening the Criminal Investigations Department’s New Headquarters and Forensic Science Laboratory in Harare on Thursday.

“Allow me to reiterate that we are going to have free, fair and credible elections,” he said.

“As the country’s law enforcement agency, we, therefore, expect you to play a pivotal role by contributing to the building of a conducive atmosphere that begets such a desired outcome, through efficient and effective policing. Government would thus do everything in its power to ensure that you are ready to adequately police the forthcoming plebiscite. Political players should not be allowed to flout the laws of this country, willy-nilly. We all have to play by the rules so that our citizens exercise their constitutional right to vote.

“Let me also take this opportunity to appeal to all political players and citizens to cooperate with the police as they exercise their constitutional mandate. The public should not provoke the police into breaking the laws they are supposed to enforce and in equal measure; the police should not provoke the citizens into breaking the law.”

Indeed our country has been under the spotlight since the launch and conclusion of Operation Restore Legacy in November last year. The operation, together with mass protests, pressure from Zanu-PF and a threat for a parliamentary impeachment, led to the resignation of Cde Robert Mugabe as president of the country.

President Mnangagwa succeeded him in a peaceful and constitutional transfer of power that has been endorsed by Sadc, African Union, European Union and the United Nations.  However, all these institutions and the people of Zimbabwe themselves are looking at the forthcoming elections to close the chapter that started in November last year.

We are mindful of the fact that recent elections held in our country have yielded contested outcomes. MDCs have consistently refused to accept defeat despite the fact that basically all local and foreign observers, among them Sadc, African Union, Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations have endorsed them as free and fair.

One factor which the MDCs have used to dispute the outcomes of previous elections was the violence that has accompanied them. We have no doubt at all that the opposition parties lost all elections held since 2000 except the first round of the March 2008 presidential election but regret to point out that violence that has occurred in some cases has been used as a pretext to dispute the results.

We applaud President Mnangagwa and his Government for consistently denouncing political violence and for pledging that the forthcoming elections would be free, fair, credible and peaceful. He and his party Zanu-PF and Government are providing the necessary leadership.

Our appeal goes to the people to heed the President’s message on the need for political tolerance and on the importance of credible elections. There is no need for us to fight over political positions. There is no political position, or any position for that matter, that is more valuable than a person’s limb, health or life.

In this vein, we are encouraged by the President’s announcement a few days ago that he would convene a meeting of representatives of all political parties in the country to exchange notes and reach a common understanding on the need for free and fair polls. This is an important signal that indicates that the Government and ruling party are committed to inter-party tolerance and understanding.

While we recognise the leading role that the President, his party and Government are playing, we must put it to the leaders of other parties to send the same message of tolerance down their own party structures.  We have not seen much in that respect in MDC-T for instance where the ongoing succession war is actually a risk factor in as far as political violence is concerned.

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