‘We know how Zanu PF steals elections’

ZIMBABWE People First (ZimPF) has made sensational claims that it has inside information on how Zanu PF rigged elections particularly the disputed 2008 and 2013 polls.

Source: ‘We know how Zanu PF steals elections’ – NewsDay Zimbabwe May 6, 2016

BY BLESSED MHLANGA

ZimPF official Retired Brigadier-General Agrippa Mutambara, who for 21 years was an ambassador and close to President Robert Mugabe, made the disclosures during a roundtable discussion in Harare yesterday.

“The reason why we will be able to win the elections is that ZimPF has people with war liberation credentials,” he said.

“We also know the modus operandi of Zanu PF and how it has fiddled with elections, how they rigged elections in 2008 when the MDC-T won and how they stole the vote in 2013. We are going to use that information to our advantage.”

Mutambara, who represented ZimPF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo at the discussion, said Zanu PF had lost support and was now engaging in violence and curtailing freedom of expression by other political parties.

“Zanu PF won’t win another election and they know it. They are now resorting to the use of violence on people who do not support them through the abuse of State resources to fund survival of the party,” he said.

Mutambara said his peers during the liberation war now regretted appointing Mugabe their leader when the late Herbert Chitepo was assassinated in Zambia in 1975.

“We made an error of choosing Mugabe after Chitepo died. But when we chose him, we thought that he had learned a thing or two during the lessons we taught each other during the war, but he did not,” he said.

MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu said the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) secretariat was being held hostage by the Central Intelligence Organisation claiming the poll body could not run elections which would remove Mugabe from power.

“Zec’s secretariat is run by the securocrats and you would be a fool to think they would preside over an election which would remove Zanu PF from power. It is this system which Mutambara gladly admits here has been behind stolen elections in Zimbabwe and needs to be changed,” he said.

People’s Democratic Party spokesperson Jacob Mafume, however, said there was need to establish a transitional government to “exorcise Zimbabwean institutions of Zanu PF blood”.

“People should not wait for 2018. People need to go into the streets and force a transitional government before we can go to free elections in this country,” Mafume said.