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"Burying Blair" - The 2005 post election report
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition
April 14, 2005

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1.0 Burying Blair?

The above question can only be answered after other preliminary questions have been considered. For example,

• Did Zanu PF steal the March 2005 parliamentary poll? If so, how and what is the proof?
• Was the election free, fair and legitimate?
• Did it "scrupulously" comply with the SADC principles guiding democratic elections?
• Did the anomalies enumerated above vitiate the freeness and fairness of the poll?
• Should all contestants to the 2005 election accept the poll result in terms of the SADC guidelines and principles?

2.0 Observations by the Coalition

Evidence collected by the Crisis Coalition suggests that Zanu PF once again subverted the will of the people of Zimbabwe in the March 2005 poll. The Coalition also noted the following:

• Zanu PFs urban showing improved significantly compared to the previous two elections
• MDC's rural vote also increased significantly
• The total number of voters in 2005 for the MDC declined by 8.94% and that of Zanu PF increased by 26.47% compared to the 2000 election. There was no significant independent voter education prior to the election
• The voters register was not accessible in electronic form. Its audit was not, therefore effectively carried out
• There was no equitable access to the media by the contesting political parties
• The SADC, AU and local observers were accredited and deployed after the 16th of March 2005. No groups or individual, therefore, monitored the process of printing and allocating ballot papers; verification and declaration of poll results.
• Restrictions imposed by repressive laws such as POSA,AIPPA persisted during the electoral process
• Covert violence and intimidation was rife

Zanu PF got 78 seats, the opposition MDC 41 and Professor Jonathan Moyo snatched one seat. Several foreign observer missions including the South African, the SADC and the African Union observer missions have described the 2005 poll as having been relatively free, fair, transparent therefore legitimate. So too has the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC[1]).

The SADC Observer Mission comprised of members from Angola, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, United Republic of Tanzania, South Africa and Zambia. Almost its entire secretariat was South African. It observed that," . . . the elections were conducted in an open, transparent and professional manner[2]" In their observation, the mission, commented the:

• High level of political maturity
• Peaceful atmosphere in which supporters of different parties were sharing transport, interacted and joked at each other
• Most members of the police were helpful
• Learning and familiarization in the spirit and the letter of the SADC Principles and Guidelines.[3]

SADC therefore concluded that," the election was peaceful, credible, well managed and transparent[4]".

However, SADC raised the following concerns,

• The need to improve in equitable access to the state media by all political parties
• The need to simplify the procedure and to ensure that authorizations for voters education are provided easily and timeously by the relevant institutions;
• The need for wide publication of updating and verification of voters roll;
• Need to ensure that all police and presiding officers are informed of the roll and rights of observers; and
• Ensure that complaints are backed by sound and verifiable facts to facilitate follow up and fast decision-making"

The African Union Observer Mission confined its findings to the point of poll. The mission observed that, "at the point of ballot, the elections were held in a peaceful and orderly manner and the polling arrangements made it possible for the voters to freely choose their preferred candidates by casting a secret ballot.[5]"

The A.U therefore concluded that the general electoral environment was peaceful but did not explicitly characterize the poll as free, fair or legitimate. In their report, the A.U also raised the following concerns,"

• Prospective voters that could not find their names on the roll and were thus turned away from the polls
• The manner in which voting assistance was given requires to be reviewed to safeguard the secrecy of the ballot
• Polling agents played a passive role thus creating an impression that they did not understand and appreciate their role in attesting to the accuracy of the election result.
• MDC has alleged that there are serious discrepancies in the official results released by ZEC for several constituencies[6].

Zanu PF accepted and celebrated the poll outcome whilst the opposition MDC -as already indicated elsewhere in this report- rejected the poll results. The coalition's view is that the election was neither free nor fair and its outcome is yet to be resolved. In other words, the poll results as yet declared by ZEC do not yet reflect the genuine will of the people of Zimbabwe.

In the absence of clarifications regarding the glaring anomalies, the conclusion is that the election was stolen.

Several inter related and complementary tactics were possibly used to rig the election. Secondly, the rigging was not just an event, but also a process that began well before the voter registration exercise. The Coalition has in its research and observation identified the following rigging methods:

• A non transparent voter registration exercise
• Gerrymandering during the process of delimiting constituency boundaries
• Covert intimidation by green bombers and traditional leaders in electoral processes
• The allegation of the use of food as a political tool
• Militarisation of electoral institutions[7]
• Voting in alphabetical order
• The use of transparent ballot boxes, and
• Counting in situ

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