By Wilbert Mukori
One of the tragic results of three decades of this Zanu PF brainwashing is that it has lowered people’s ability to think logically. Zimbabweans have become masters of rhetorical nonsense; yes, even Supreme Court Judges too are at it.
“Most commentators reacted more to the result than to the process,” Supreme Court of Zimbabwe and ZEC chairperson Justice Rita Makarau told delegates at the start to a three day conference at Harare International Conference Centre.
The conference is All-stakeholders review conference on the 2013 referendum and harmonised elections hosted by ZEC.
To start with; if ZEC has the money to host this three day conference at the nation’s most expensive conference centre then surely it must have the money to fix the computer problem that the commission said is stopping the release the voters roll!
Second, if the conference is meant to stop a repeat of the serious shortcomings in last year’s elections then why is Judge Makarau obsessed about restricting the discussion on the one aspect, the process, and not the process and results?
This is rhetorical nonsense; to give an accurate description of a donkey one does not restrict oneself to the front or behind of the animal but covers the whole animal because the donkey has both a front and behind.
A thorough and meaningful review of the elections must therefore cover each aspect of the process and every aspect of the results to see how one affected the other.
In fact Judge Makarau not only wants us to focus on just the process but is narrowing this down further to the “patently good practices that attended the process.” This is like looking at the front of the donkey, zoom in on its head and then, rightly, conclude that donkeys have no horns.
Yeah; but there are cows that do not have horns and yet they are still cows not donkeys!
ZEC is obsessed about the process and not the results as if the commission was appointed to deliver on a process.
The Commission does not want to talk about the results because they know the results were not a true reflection of the democratic wishes of the people of Zimbabwe. Everyone knows that Mugabe rigged the elections.
One of ZEC’s key responsibilities is to make sure a clean voters roll is released at least a month before the elections. ZEC has failed to release a voters roll even now; seven months after the elections although there have been repeated calls for the commission to do so.
If ZEC was to discuss the results or gapping loopholes in the process that allowed the vote rigging then the commission will have to answer the difficult questions of why the voters roll has not been released, for example.
ZEC’s excuse for not releasing the voters roll was that the computer with the data has broken down. That was in August 2013! We are expected to believe the computer has not been fixed and there is not one single hard copy available to be released. This is one computer that will never ever be fixed!
The voters roll will never be released because it is the smoking gun to how the elections were rigged.
Of course there is no hope that the next elections, whenever they are going to be held, will not be rigged once again and thus the people again denied a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
The failure to hold free elections is the core reason why the nation is in this political and economic mess and another rigged election is another forfeited chance to get out of the mess.
What hope is there of stopping the vote rigging if those tasked to ensure free and fair elections will not even look at their serious failures but contend themselves with hiding behind rhetorical nonsense!
“The perception that we have gained maybe correctly or incorrectly is that immediately after the harmonised elections, most commentators reacted more to the result than to the process,” said Judge Makarau. Yes Judge your perception is impeccable; a cow with no horns must be a donkey!
