Zimbabwe: What's Democracy Got to Do With It? - AllAfrica.com

Alex Magaisa

FOR most Zimbabweans awaiting the delinquent presidential election results, one word encapsulates their present predicament: Zvakadhakwa.

It literally intends that everything and everyone is in a state of intoxication. It connotes that one cannot do sense of things; that nil is moving and if it is, it is the movement of the staggering, drunken person -- directionless, senseless and confused.

For this is what it is. The whole state is in a daze. It have been for a few years. Stoned, sloshed, high, intoxicated and incapable.

When you look at it you might believe there is democracy. For when they queued to vote on March 29, it was the 6th juncture in eight old age since the Constitutional Referendum in 2000. But then you look more than than closely and you see that it is no more than a head covering of democracy.

This election in peculiar have been unusual. More than anything it have got what lies beneath the veil.

It is unusual because almost two hebdomads after the cardinal elections, Zimbabweans have been waiting for the consequence of the presidential poll. In past elections, the difference have been over the matter of the result, not over its release.

And most unusually, the opinion party, the arrangement that for so long have been in control of the electoral process, is behaving in a mode generally associated with the opposition. Except that because it is the opinion party, it have got been able to mistreat its authorization over the weaponry of the state by withholding the result.

Even the position that Mugabe and Zanu PF have concerns about the Republic Of Zimbabwe Electoral Committee (ZEC)'s counting procedure makes not stand up scrutiny. Zimbabweans cognize that the MDC had similar concerns about the electoral procedure in former elections, particularly in the 2000 parliamentary and 2002 presidential elections. But that did not halt the electoral organic structure from announcing the consequences and declaring Mugabe and Zanu PF as the winners.

Mugabe insisted that any dialogues with or challenges by Lewis Henry Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC could only be conducted if they recognised his presidency.

What then have changed on this occasion, so that the ZEC should keep back consequences simply because Zanu PF have objections? Surely, if the consequences favoured Mugabe and Zanu PF, the ZEC would have got got announced the consequences and the MDC would have been directed through the constitutional route, as have happened before, to do their challenges. Why can't Zanu PF make its expostulations using the legal channels to which they have got got so often directed the resistance in the past?

You do not have to look far for the answer. It is because the powerfulness that Zanu PF is now relying upon is the sort of powerfulness that is not subject to an election: powerfulness emanating from the security structure. It is because Republic Of Zimbabwe is now effectively a state that is ruled by the security establishment.

For too long Zimbabweans have got laboured under the feeling that there is some color of democracy in the state and that the legitimate chemical mechanism for leading alteration is through the electoral process. They have got embraced it regardless of the acknowledged limitations. If ever there was grounds that the electoral procedure in Republic Of Republic Of Republic Of Zimbabwe is no more than than a portion of an luxuriant parody of democracy, this is it.

The same thought have crippled the international community's position of Zimbabwe, the most blameworthy beingness the African leadership who trade with Zimbabwe as if it were a normal democracy. What greater grounds should there be before they admit that Republic Of Zimbabwe is effectively operating as a military state, where the volition of the people is slowly but surely being subverted or at the very least postponed unnecessarily?

Relevant Links

The registered electors who voted in the recent elections have got a legitimate outlook to cognize the consequence of their vote. By withholding the results, without any sensible explanation, the ZEC's behavior is inconsistent with the philosophy of legitimate outlooks which uses to all public authorities. The philosophy of legitimate outlooks spreads out the bounds of the conception of equity and in coming to a determination to or not to denote the results, the ZEC owes a duty to move fairly to all political parties and people that participated in the elections.

The Sadc leadership will now necessitate to peer through and even raise the head covering of democracy and legitimacy that the opinion political party have for so long used to cover its Acts and omissions. For as long as they cover with Republic Of Zimbabwe on the footing that it runs on the same platform, using similar democratic institutions, they will go on to dilly-dally and perpetuate what is in fact a military-style regime.

Perhaps they are waiting for a formal declaration of a military coup d'etat before they can admit the sad reality. There is, here, a Delaware facto military authorities in complaint of the country, masquerading as a Delaware jure constitutional government. In fact, during this impasse, constitutional powerfulness is vested solely in the president, but plainly, those in complaint are the security establishment. Without the security structure, Zanu PF would sink.

Page 1 of 2

1