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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Talks, dialogue, negotiations and GNU - Post June 2008 "elections" - Index of articles
Truth, justice, reconciliation and national healing - Index of articles
Demand
for democracy and justice campaign demonstration
Restoration of Human Rights (ROHR)
October 09, 2008
Today ROHR Zimbabwe
members take to the street of Harare to demonstrate. This protest
marks the inaugural of the campaign for Democracy and Justice in
Zimbabwe whose primary aim is to see Zimbabwe hold fresh election
within 2 years. Our hopes are underpinned in the need for people
to embrace and feel passionately for the need to be ruled by a government
that will be accountable to them simply because they chose it into
power.
An arm-twist
kind of a deal that is a product of clandestine negotiations among
the political elite on a platform that suffers from a calculated
exclusion of the ruled and other important stakeholders in the Zimbabwe's
crisis, falls short of the acceptable democratic standards, and
sets a very bad human rights precedence. The 15 September 2008 GNU
'deal'
is a compromise arrangement, a painful alternative to an ideal government
that Zimbabweans want. The bottom line is people in Zimbabwe, like
any other country, have a right to a democratically established
government, which is a true representation of the wishes and aspirations
of the majority.
The Zimbabwean crisis
continues unabated despite the fact that the principal parties to
the crisis, Zanu-PF and the two formations of the Movement for Democratic
Change, MDC, are engaged in talks aimed at arriving at a government
of national unity.
At the moment, there
is a deadlock in the talks as to the real power sharing, with Mugabe
and Zanu-PF trying to ensure that the MDC emerges from the talks
powerless than had been anticipated after March 29, 2008.
Zanu-PF is making
frantic efforts to retain power that it lost to Morgan Tsvangirai
and the MDC during the March 29 election, a situation that is a
direct assault on the people's power and constitutional right
to choose the leader they want.Thus, the people's will and
right to choice has been subverted by a political process that was
flawed from the onset.
The Demand For Democracy
and Justice Campaign thus seeks to pressure the negotiating parties
to remember that they are negotiating on a flawed platform and that
the outcome of the process is already compromised, disregarding
the will of the people.
The campaign will encourage
Zimbabweans to demand that free and fair elections be held in the
shortest period of time possible and that the principals should
create an environment that would be conducive to the holding of
such, whose outcome will be reflective of the will of the people
of Zimbabwe.
It is also anticipated
that through the campaign, the political leaders will embrace the
mandate and responsibility of ensuring that the election that will
be held in the country is not, in any way, going to create a situation
where the rights of the people of Zimbabwe are infringed on.
Through the campaign, Zimbabweans will be called upon to take an
active and participatory role in the governance of their affairs
than relegate their destiny on a few individuals, some of them without
the locus standi to determine that destiny.
Until people are finally
given the opportunity of exercising their right to vote for a leader
of their choice in a free, fair and peaceful environment, whose
outcome will be undisputable, the campaign will unpack a series
of protests to push this national agenda forward.
Visit the ROHR
fact
sheet
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