MDC-T co-vice-president, Elias Mudzuri has urged opposition political parties and other stakeholders to close ranks and expose Zanu PF’s electoral rigging antics, particularly increased use of State-sponsored violence ahead of the 2018 elections.
Source: Expose Zanu PF’s poll rigging antics: Mudzuri – NewsDay Zimbabwe October 3, 2016
BY Albert Masaka
Mudzuri, in a statement last week, accused Zanu PF of unleashing a terror campaign in rural areas to intimidate voters.
“Zimbabweans have failed in the past to articulate and explain to the people and the world the nature of Zanu PF rigging, the nature and purpose of the violence that characterised all elections in the country. This has enabled Zanu PF to get away with its criminal activities and to create the impression that it has support in the rural areas,” he said.
“Victories claimed by Zanu PF have always been attributed to massive rigging, but the proof of it has not been convincing. People have given the shambolic voters’ roll, the defective electoral laws, the biased electoral management bodies, the involvement of the military and recently Nikuv, as having aided Zanu PF in stealing elections.”
He warned that Zanu PF intimidation had become so entrenched that “even if the ruling party accedes to all electoral law reforms, the outcome of any future elections will reflect those of the past if the conduct of the process is not reformed to give the rural electorate their constitutional right to freely cast their vote.
“Zanu PF has put in place a well-coordinated and methodical way of ensuring the rural voters vote for it against their will. Contrary to the widely held belief that Zanu PF enjoys massive support in the rural areas, there is no rural-urban divide in the support for change in Zimbabwe.
“This was demonstrated by the massive win the MDC-T registered in the 2008 harmonised elections which were relatively free and fair. The electoral laws and the messy voters’ roll played no significant part in the outcome.
“If anything, the voters’ roll was more shambolic than that of the 2013 elections in which Zanu PF again used the violence and intimidation in the June 2008 embarrassing one-man Presidential run-off race,” he said.
Mudzuri said Zanu PF was, in the 2018 elections, likely to frogmarch voters to polling stations, force the majority of rural voters to feign illiteracy so that they are assisted to vote, and invoke fears of the 2002 and 2008 election violence to influence voting patterns.
COMMENTS