22 November 2021 Article as taken from a ZHRO, MyRight2Vote and ROHR Petition (2nd December 2021 petition to Boris Johnson)
We now see the governments true intentions, about elections in Zimbabwe. The memorandum of the 17th November 2021 within the Zimbabwe Election Commission, ZEC, regarding the matter of voter registration titled ;-
Subject; POSTPONEMENT OF THE DECEMBER 2021 MOBILE BIOMETRIC VOTER REGISTRATION (BVR EXERCISE) BLITZ.
This is the “smoking gun “, we have been looking for and now we have found it. This means that the 2023 elections will be contested without doubt and so we are now preparing for that. We have caught ZEC red handed rigging and fixing the 2023 elections.
Elections are fixed and rigged well, well before the election date. They are fixed and rigged by the systems that are adopted by the government of the day. It is like a football match. The government of the day is like a player of one of those teams.
But then he is also the referee for that coming football match. That referee then goes a step further and says that the opposing team is not allowed a goalkeeper, a centre forward, a centre half and a left back. But the referee's teams have a full complement of players. It is clear that the referee’s team will win the match, well before it has started. This is what the government and ZEC are doing here.
Voter Registration Problems - ZEC
We already know that there are millions and millions of people not registered on the voters-role in Zimbabwe, because they do not have Identity papers and/or birth certificates. Roughly 400 000 who are the descendants of the labour force that came from Malawi and Zambia between 1955 -1985. We then have the victims and survivors of the Ndebele genocide that run into the high hundreds of thousands who also could not get identity documents because the state refused to give their dead relatives death certificates, that were stamped, cause of death “ Genocide by government of the day“.
We further know that every year there are 800 000 school levers who just disappear from the system and are not registered on the voters-roll.
The government through ZEC is now excluding these people from registering for the 2023 elections. Because the fewer people register, the easier is it to rig the election. The more people register, then the harder it is to rig the election.
It is in this month of December that most people would have returned to their places of residence. Where they would likely vote come the election. Now these people cannot register to be on the voters-roll. Of greater concern are the hundreds of thousands who are all returning from the SADC diaspora for Christmas break, this month, the month of December.
We have already seen efforts from South Africa, of the Zimbabwean Diaspora getting itself together, to make the journey back to the homes in Zimbabwe. So that once there they may register to vote. The Zimbabwe Embassy in South Africa is aware of this, yet here is ZEC and government, ensuring that these people cannot register to vote.
Tribal Lines
The majority of these people in the SADC diaspora are Ndebele. Which means that here is a government decision that is purely tribalistic in intent and execution. We have no reservations at all, in levelling such a blunt accusation to this government about this. That it is operating on a tribal footing.
What makes matters worse is that the stoppage of service is indefinite. It is like ZEC and the government are playing hide and seek with those who wish to register to vote, whilst on the other side it is busy calling for people to come and register. A most reprehensible, loathsome conduct from a government. That is to wilfully deny the citizens of the Republic of Zimbabwe, the human right to vote.
So, it meant that the government was also untruthful to us all, when it said, if the Zimbabwean diaspora wish to vote, all they have to do is to come back to Zimbabwe and they can vote. Yet when they do come back to register to vote ZEC is closed for business. There are many choice words one could use in this regard about our governments conduct here, but with regret they would fall on deaf ears.
The foot note of this memorandum goes to phase two of the vote rigging scandal. ZEC says that whilst it knows that the roll is not complete and accurate, it says that it's official can continue fixing the voter roll in the exclusion of the hundreds of thousands that it has prevented from registering. Which that the political boundaries are being fixed knowingly inaccurate. ZEC is official engaging in Gerrymandering (The manipulation of an electoral boundaries and number so that one political party wins that coming election).
ZEC is rigging the vote
So ZEC is continuing to fix the areas, even though it knows that the Enumeration Area to Polling Area are wrong and are in error, because of those hundreds of thousands of people that have been denied to register, by design, by ZEC and the current government . This is phase two election rigging we are witnessing in broad daylight. Here there is no need to look for a “V 11” form. No, the fraud is plain to see.
Phase four of this electoral rigging by ZEC and the government is, how does ZEC and this government continue to update the Alpha list, when hundreds of thousands have been denied their Human Right to Register for the elections.
Right now, the government and ZEC, if they were being truthful and transparent, should have quadrupled their voter registration campaigns. This is by far the biggest problem we have as a country today. All our problems stem from the fact that we have a government in office that was NOT chosen by the people. That is why the government is not functioning in all areas, be they, health, schools, local government, business and enterprise, judiciary ….... Everything stems from one’s ability to cast a vote into the ballot box.
If we do not protect this, we have done nothing. Because everything else we try to fix is doomed to fail, because of this. In biblical terms this is the cornerstone of our democracy. If a cornerstone is not there in a building, the building is structurally unsound and collapses. The building is condemned and is demolished. It is not the people of Zimbabwe that are condemned but it is the government of the day that is condemned.
No Rule of Law
The existence of this memorandum is important because it is the smoking gun of electoral fraud and vote rigging for the 2023 elections. In the month of October 2021, the country witnessed both political verbal and physical violence on the streets. However, this breakdown of Law and Oder has been developing since the last elections in 2018. The Rule of Law is in a critical state, as the last vestige of democracy. In such a state there arises the question of whether free and fair elections can take place in such an environment?
The calls for the postponement of the elections come with the following rational; -
- The non-implementation of electoral reforms
- The under-funding and lack of resourcing of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, ZEC.
- The low level of electoral registration by ZEC
- The failure of ZEC to meet its responsibilities under the law
- Vote rigging and electoral fraud
The call for any election in any country to be postponed is a serious matter. For it is actually stopping the democratic process, that determined what kind of government the people have.
The reasons given above by those calling for the postponement of the 2023 election, have to be resolved by the act of the postponement. If the act of postponement of the elections, does not quickly resolve the identified problem, then it is futile to postpone the election.
All of the problems cited fall under the jurisdiction of the current government of Zimbabwe.
Indeed, all of the problems cited for the postponement of the election, have been cultivated by the current government.
My Right to Vote Viewpoint
MyRight2Vote adopts the position that the Zimbabwe 2023 General Elections must not be postponed because the stated reasons can be resolved, well before the elections. All that is required is the right political will. Should the government have difficulties with resolving some of those challenges, there is assistance available from the Southern African Development Countries, SADC, the African Union, the International arena and the United Nations
MyRight2Vote rejects the idea of the 2023 elections being postponed and being substituted by a Government of National Unity, GNU ( Or as the leaked documentation from the recent Zanu PF meeting has chosen to call it “A Transitional Government“ that we reject because their version is not people led and is trying to revive the defunct POLAD ). Such a course of action would have the effect of giving the current government, another illegitimate term of office, having not been elected by the citizens of Zimbabwe to govern.
Zimbabwe is now in complete crisis. Democracy has suffered a catastrophic failure, making piecemeal attempts at rectifying the situation, a futile endeavour. In the last elections in 2018, a total of 4.8 million Zimbabweans voted in the country.
50% of Zimbabweans are in the Diaspora
However, at that very same time there were 5.5 million plus Zimbabweans in the diaspora, who were not allowed to vote by the current government because they lived in the diaspora.
It is this challenge to democracy, that MyRight2Vote seeks to address with its Zimbabwean Diaspora Vote Campaign. For example;
The size of the voting population of the United Kingdom was 47,074,800 in 2019 (forty-seven million and seventy-four thousand, eight hundred). What if the current government of the United Kingdom decided to disqualify, 23,537,400, (Twenty-three million, five hundred and thirty-seven thousand four hundred) British citizens from voting. That number is 50 % of the electorate. This is what has happened in Zimbabwe. In that 50 % plus of the citizens who should be allowed to vote, are not allowed to vote by the current government.
MyRight2Vote is campaigning that the Zimbabwean Diaspora be allowed to vote in the 2023 elections. However, MyRight2Vote is also independently facilitating the Zimbabwe Diaspora elections for 2023, in the diaspora, since the current government has already stated in public and in the Zimbabwean High Courts, that it will not allow the Zimbabwean Diaspora to vote.
Regional and International Influence
MyRight2Vote is minded that the electoral process that it is holding for the Zimbabwean diaspora community already is in principle accepted by the international arena. And the international arena, SADC, African Union, United Nations, EU as a coalition can affect the wishes and aspirations of the Zimbabwean Diaspora in Zimbabwe. Whether the current government is or is not party to that.
The world has changed and now wishes to engage the Zimbabwe government on a Hard-Edged Diplomacy process that is result-led. It’s beginning with the implementation of the electoral Reforms, The Rule of Law and democracy.
Some of this Hard-Edged Diplomacy we have already seen at COP 26, then now with the exclusion of the current government from Joe Biden's Democracy and economy world conference. For if one observes what has happened during the last 41 years, the current government has had it relatively easy, since the international arena did not wish to act. However, that has changed and now our government will experience Hard-Edged Diplomacy. From what transpired at COP 26 it is clear that no other government will come to the aid of our government. It is fair to say our government is on its own.