Legalbrief | your legal news hub Thursday 30 September 2021

Biti warns of resistance if MDC loses vote

If Zanu-PF and its leader, President do ‘steal’ the elections today, and the MDC Alliance will make the country ‘ungovernable’. This is the comment from Biti, leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, one of seven parties contesting the elections under the banner of the MDC Alliance, notes a report on the Daily Maverick site. The MDC Alliance’s presidential candidate has been accused by Zanu-PF of inciting violence because of the same sort of threat. But Biti, in an interview with DM, reportedly denied that the opposition grouping was planning to initiate violence. He said in the event that it lost the election, the alliance merely planned to exercise its constitutional right to peaceful resistance. Biti is sure that the political playing field is tilted steeply against the MDC. For starters: ‘We’ve got a totally toxic election management body run by a totally erratic if not incompetent chairperson,’ he said, referring to Priscilla Chigumba, the highly controversial chairperson of the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) which is officially running the elections. ‘For example, we don’t have access to the voters roll, in analysable form. I have a letter from the ZEC through my which says ‘you can analyse it on voting day’. Can you believe that? Yet Zanu-PF has had access to the data base for a while. They have been sending texts and e-mails to their voters. There is total collusion between the ZEC and Zanu-PF. Quite clearly ZEC is not running the election.’ He said the voters roll, which he noted appeared to be a merger of the 2013 voters roll – to which the MDC had still not had access – with the current one. Neither had been audited. Independent auditors have attempted an analysis of the roll and have identified about 250 000 suspect names on it, noting many voters well over the age of 100 and other anomalies such as people with identical names and identity numbers that are also identical, save for one digit.

He also referred to 'the shenanigans around the printing of the ballot papers’, noting complaints from the MDC that the ZEC had been secretive about how the ballots had been printed. ‘If they have nothing to hide on the ballots papers, they should show us the state of the ballots. There is evidence all over Africa of tampering with ballots, through chromatography which allows markers to shift. It sounds like wild allegations. If so, they should demonstrate that. In 2013 I saw ballots ticked as if with a giant machine.’ The DM report notes chromatography is a technique for chemically altering images on paper and the MDC clearly suspects it will be used to boost Zanu-PF’s votes. Biti, a lawyer by profession, but who is widely believed to have done a good job as Finance Minister in the unity government between Zanu-PF and MDC from 2009 to 2013, declined to say whether he was likely to get the same job in an MDC government if it won the election. ‘I can’t appoint myself,’ he said. But would he like to be Finance Minister again? ‘I would like to see Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF gone,’ was his reply.

Zimbabwe’s former President yesterday vowed not to vote for his successor, Mnangagwa. Instead, he endorsed Chamisa, says a Mail & Guardian Online report. Addressing a press conference at his home in a suburb, Mugabe said people should respect the outcome of the election. He said he hopes to meet Chamisa if he wins. Mugabe said he was forced to resign last November at a time he had already planned to voluntarily step down at Zanu-PF’s congress the following month and hand over power to former Defence Minister . He said he had talked to Sekeramayi, who remains a senior Zanu-PF member, who had agreed to take over. He dismissed claims that he wanted to hand over power to his wife, Grace as ‘utter nonsense'. ‘I must say clearly, I can’t vote for people who have tormented me. I can’t. I will choose among the 22 (other candidates),’ Mugabe said. However, he added that he was not going to vote for his former deputy, , who was sacked from government in 2014, as she does not have support. Mugabe said: ‘What is there, is just Chamisa.’ The ex-Zanu-PF leader said he was removed through a coup. ‘Our neighbours are fooled to believing that it was not a coup d’etat. Nonsense, it was a coup d’etat,’ said Mugabe.