Chamisa rejects SADC recommendation for domestic remedies to election dispute, offers no solution but says citizens will not be silenced  

Citizens Coalition for Change leader Nelson Chamisa has rejected a recommendation by the Southern African Development Community Electoral Observation Mission on the 23 August elections in Zimbabwe that “any grievance with respect to the election results (should be) channelled through the appropriate legal processes to ensure the exhaustion of domestic legal remedies” arguing that “domestic remedies cannot be a credible response and are therefore clearly inadequate and incapable of resolving this long standing national crisis”.

The final report of the SADCEOM was released last week and Zimbabwe is still to respond.

Chamisa was in the headlines today after President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s spokesman  George Charamba said he has been making frantic efforts to talk to Mnangagwa from 2018. He has used several emissaries including former Zimbabwe Council of Churches general secretary Kenneth Mutata, Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, former Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume and Zion Christian Church leader Bishop Nehemiah Mutendi.

The CCC leader who has been facing a barrage of criticism following the recall of 15 Members of Parliament, nine Senators and 17 councillors, today said on his X handle that the SADC final report on Zimbabwe’s harmonised elections was a powerful affirmation of the consensus that exists among the majority of Zimbabweans that the conduct of the 23 August elections flagrantly violated the Constitution of Zimbabwe, Electoral laws and SADC Guidelines and Principles on Elections.

“As the Report itself notes in its Recommendations and other sections, there are still outstanding recommendations from 2018 on the lack of impartiality of the key institutions. In addition to this, the Report itself highlights a litany of very serious and brazen breaches which result in SEOM concluding that the Elections fell short of the standards highlighted above,” he said.

“Given the above developments, based on the Report’s own findings, domestic remedies cannot be a credible response and are therefore clearly inadequate and incapable of resolving this long standing national crisis.”

The government and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front say that there is no crisis in the country arguing that a crisis in CCC is not a national crisis.

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