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The right to vote, win elections and regime change
Marko Phiri
August 14, 2007

The most pressing thing as Zimbabwe heads for elections next year is the lingering hope that the will of the people will win the day amid continued hardships engineered by the founding fathers despite the ruling Zanu PF-s age old insistence it is the only political formation which holds the eternal keys of the battered country. By the contemporary collective sentiments of the people, it will be very surprising for the present dispensation to emerge triumphant, and naturally students of history will author tomes trying to dissect what really happened.

But by past experience, the ruling party, though roundly despised by millions for the misery it has brought, this has still not led to any defeat at the polls though events and developments here have always tended to forecast a different electoral outcome. Today however as the nation continues to wallow deeper and deeper into the whirlpool of mass poverty, kosher patriots will be inclined to think they deserve better, thus the election itself will be a moment to redeem themselves from the authors of political and economic mayhem.

It will be recalled that when the results of the 2000 poll threatened the make Zanu PF obsolete, some analysts and pro-government types said what had buoyed the MDC to such historic victory was the people's so-called "protest vote." Though the legitimacy of the overall result stood contested by the MDC, this became a pointer about the ability of the people, the power of the ballot to effect peaceful regime change. Thus ultimately, every election is a protest against something, and post-independence Zimbabwe's electorate sure has many things to protest about.

While it was said then that the MDC itself had little to offer in its manifestos in terms of what it would offer in real terms other than obsess about unseating an increasingly autocratic regime once it gained the majority in parliament, or once it assumed the presidency, this still did not seem to bother the people who wanted change, not for change's sake as some cynics said, but a new beginning. The oracles of old will tell you there is nothing wrong with moving on in life, careers, change of government, love, etc. That is how the human spirit is allowed to grow and flourish. If you are trapped in a time capsule you only wake up in the future a very confused individual. But then, this is the pedestrian philosophy Zimbabwe-s founding fathers have vehemently ignored.

Even an untrained logician will tell you that as Zimbabwe has been condemned into a state where the repression of alternative voices and economic mismanagement have become the operating principles of the regime, it only makes sense then that the people protest about this. And this time, the protest is not on the street in the fashion of civil disobedience favoured by the robotics professor and other dare-devil pro-democracy activists, but through the ballot itself. Yet one lingering motif has always been the claims by election observers and opposition political parties about the ruling party's brazen inveterate theft of the ballot. Street protests have only proven to be a realm of the foolhardy, and one only needs the events of March this year as a starting point.

But then, it is a known historical fact that rigging of the poll has always been a phenomenon of African politics and the sad history of post-independent Zimbabwe has always been that of the ruling party allegedly stuffing the ballot boxes and inflating the votes in its favour. While it has been argued by the ruling party and other rabid pan-Africanists in its tow that this is the cry of the people who are sore losers, it apparently remains unknown even to students of voting behaviour how a party so despised can claim victory fair and square. This sentiment can even be read in the pledge by Mbeki the only thing that will redeem Zimbabwe is a free and fair poll. But still it will be recalled that the SA observer mission of the last legislative poll was that the elections which diminished the MDC seats were free but not necessarily fair. Where do the ordinary voters who feel cheated seek recourse then to assure their vote is respected within the realm of a democratic dispensation of free and fair elections? If it is free, how can it be "unfair?" If it is fair, how can it be "unfree?" Can voters and opposition political parties alike then be assured that a Zimbabwean election can have both elements for them to have a result that is universally accepted? And of interest for argument-s sake as raised by other quarters is the acceptance of a poll result where Mugabe-s ruling Zanu PF wins with the endorsed by the MDC as being free and fair. This still remains contentious as to how it would be possible considering the seemingly sweeping popular sentiment that Zanu PF is not the party of the future here.

Zimbabwe-s history sure has Zanu PF its annals, but it sure had no place in the country-s future. That is a sentiment informed by events here which has seen the ruling party dragging the economy and social services to levels which we are told have not been seen in a country not at war. So, if Mugabe emerges triumphant in an election which opposition forces and international poll observers - who Zanu PF sees as the "other" enemy - endorse as free and fair, what would it mean about international efforts to help the battered economy when the ruling party has previously rebuffed such efforts? Will the regime continue pursuing its megaphone diplomacy telling everybody else singing a different tune to stuff it? Will bowls of goodwill line the streets to the capital to help rebuild the battered economy? Tough one that. And it reminds one about talk being cheap. You can proclaim that now, but when the crunch comes, what will it really mean about collective or local efforts to rescue the nation from further sinking into a self-consuming miasma?

A joke was told about a thief who broke into State House and fled with a huge steel box which he believed had zillions of the useless "false money" - the bearer cheques. In the safety of his lair he opened the box only to be met by the caption "2008 election results." The anecdote probably best illustrates just how disgruntled the people are with the system but apparently cannot do anything about it. And then you still have Zanu PF claiming victory despite everything else pointing to an outright massacre at the polls. The people's protest vote even in the absence of what others still view as hazy or nebulous policy positions of the fractured opposition, is legitimated by the fact that outside the ballot, Zimbabweans have shown that they cannot pursue other avenues as possible vehicles of change. Who can blame them?

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