The MDC court challenge and the election dilemma

One of the reasons why the Movement for Democratic Change and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front agreed not to have elections or by-elections during the lifetime of the Global Political Agreement was “the divisive and often times confrontational nature of elections and by elections”.

We are seeing this today, nearly five years after the signing of the Global Political Agreement. The Movement for Democratic Change has just lost an election which it says was flawed and illegitimate. They have filed their case with the Constitutional Court, so it is now up to the court to decide.

As the victor president-elect Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF have told presidential aspirant Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC to go hang. This is politics. There are winners and losers.

The MDC wants the elections nullified and new elections to be held in 60 days. Having listened to the MDC’s argument before the 31 July elections, one would have thought that the MDC would not ask for anything less than 90 days.

According to the MDC, the voters’ roll is in shambles. There is need for electoral reforms. Candidates need at least one month to campaign. So that leaves 30 days. Is the MDC saying it can clean up the voters’ roll and implement the reforms in 30 days? How?

While the MDC has every right to challenge the elections results if it feels it was cheated, the very act of demanding elections within 60 days shows it is not serious.

First of all, the government needs money to hold elections. Can the government mobilise enough funds to hold elections in 60 days when it is not even clear whether they raised enough money to hold last month’s elections?

Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who is the MDC-secretary-general, insisted in March that the country did not have money to hold the referendum and had only $217 in its account. President Mugabe said the referendum would go ahead. And it did.

When 31 July was set as the general elections date, Biti said the government did not have money. Mugabe insisted the elections would go ahead on that date. And they did.

Now the MDC wants elections in 60 days if it wins its court case. Who is going to raise the money? Surely, it can’t be Mugabe who seems to have raised or made sure that the funds for the referendum and the elections were there?

Where will the government get the money at such short notice? Surely, not from donors because the very same people refused to fund the referendum and the 31 July elections.

Even if the money were to be available, who is going to mobilise the voters, who did not want elections in the first place because of their violent nature.

The elections were peaceful because people wanted them over and done with. And as The Insider predicted, either there was going to be a close tie or a very wide margin because people did not want a rerun. It turned out to be a wider margin.

After five elections, Zimbabweans must be tired about the MDC’s complaints that the elections were flawed, because it seems that for elections to be free and fair, the MDC must win.

The MDC claims it has won all the previous elections but was robbed by the election supervisors. It challenged the results of the 2000 parliamentary elections, the 2002 presidential elections, the 2005 parliamentary elections, the 2008 harmonised elections and now it is challenging the results of the 2013 harmonised elections.

Zimbabwean people are not daft. If anything the last two elections, the 2008 and the 2013 elections have shown that Zimbabwean voters are mature people, who are not blind followers of any political party. They want a party that delivers, not one that just talks about promises.

ZANU-PF learnt a bitter lesson in 2008. Don’t take people for granted. If you tamper with their livelihoods they look for someone who can improve their lives.

In 2013, it was the MDC’s turn to learn that they should not take people for granted. Just because Mugabe has been in power too long, is not good enough a reason to get rid of him, if his party can deliver.

It, therefore, appears that the MDC court challenge is just a face-saving exercise. But at whose expense?

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