RSS 2.0 FeedJanuary 2012 Volume 39, Featured Articles, Guest Writer
Mugabe’s hollow election bark
HARARE - 2011 has become another year of unfilled resolutions for President Robert Mugabe, with his failure to force elections as resolved by his Zanu PF party at its December 2010 conference highlighting how the coalition government has diluted the 87-year-old’s power writes Wonai Masvingise and Tendai Kamhungira .
At the 2010 Mutare conference, Mugabe swore that elections would be held in 2011, with party members declaring they would not allow the coalition government formed in February 2009 to continue beyond the year.
Part of the resolutions made by the party in 2010 read; “Resolves that at the expiry of the term of the Global Political Agreement with two MDC formations on September 15, 2008 and the inclusive government born there from on February 13, 2009, the country must hold harmonised elections without fail.
“Unanimously (The party) endorses the President and First secretary, Cde R.G Mugabe, as the Party’s state presidential candidate in the 2011 harmonised elections.”
Proving that Mugabe’s bark is stronger than his bite — at least relating to elections — the year passed with no polls taking place.
Another party conference followed in December 2011 and with it another election resolution.
Without explaining why the party failed to drive through its 2010 resolution on elections, Mugabe and Zanu PF proceeded to again list among its 2011 conference resolutions that elections should be held in 2012 without fail.
The mere mention of elections brings a chill down the spines of ordinary Zimbabweans who are petrified by the bloody violence that accompanies election campaigning.
Elections in Zimbabwe have become synonymous with political violence and so the year passed with people scared they faced a repeat of 2008 when violence rocked the country as Mugabe battled to overturn a first round defeat by Tsvangirai.
Unlike in the past, before its three-decade rule was broken by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC, Zanu PF can no longer unilaterally declare elections.
A power sharing Global Political Agreement that forms the founding accord of the fragile coalition government insists that elections can only be held with the full consent of all coalition partners, a position supported by regional Sadc leaders that are supervising the coalition government’s progress.
The coalition was formed at the behest of Sadc after the African Union rejected a runoff boycotted by Tsvangirai following gross violence that rights groups say was led by a military fiercely loyal to Mugabe.
Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary-general, recently told journalists that Mugabe was powerless to call for elections without prior consultation and agreement with other coalition government principals.
“Zanu PF is behaving with an opposition party mentality, which is why they marched out of parliament like what we used to do in 2000 when we were still the opposition party. Zanu PF has realised that it cannot push us to be part and parcel of its agenda,” Biti said.
“Mugabe does not have the power to determine the election date without consulting the Prime Minister. It is in black and white in the GPA. The date for the next elections is process determined and process driven, conditions should be met first,” said Biti, one of Tsvangirai’s chief power sharing talks negotiators.
South African President Jacob Zuma, who was appointed by Sadc to be its point man on the Zimbabwe political crisis, is on record as saying elections can only be held after the full implementation of all the agreed reforms.
If the necessary reforms, including the completion of a new constitution, are to be implemented to the letter, the process is likely to consume the whole of 2012, meaning the earliest Zimbabwe can hold elections will be in 2013, according to expert groups such as Veritas, a grouping of lawyers tracking parliamentary processes and political reforms.
Despite the public posturing, Mugabe has on occasions, tacitly accepted that he no longer wields the power to call elections as he pleases.
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