If the criteria for determining whether an election is free and fair included only what happens on voting days, then it would indeed be unreasonable to pass judgment before March 9 and 10. However, the recommendations set by the SADC Parliamentary Forum make it clear that the polling is only the last step of the process. A free and fair election requires a large number of other conditions which have to be in place long before the voting occurs. Among these are an independent Electoral Commission, equal acces to the media for all parties, free campaigning for everyone throughout the country, and the provision of transparent ballot boxes. None of these conditions are present in Zimbabwe. On the contrary, the Electoral Commission is appointed by the President alone and has staff seconded mainly from the military; the opposition has been denied access to the radio and TV which are owned by the government and blatantly campaign for ZANU PF; the opposition has been prevented by organised violence from campaigning openly in many parts of the country, and have frequently been refused permission to hold rallies; we retain the old wooden ballot boxes whose bottoms can be unscrewed in spite of an offer of free transparent boxes.
The level of violence in Zimbabwe, mainy directed at the opposition, simply does not permit a normal election campaigning process to take place. Under such circumstances, it is possible to make a judgment that the election cannot be free and fair according to SADC standards.
What observer teams normally end up doing is deciding whether an election is credible or believable. Whether you believe something or not is to some extent subjective. But given the obstacles mentioned above, it would be possible to say that a win for the oppostion can be credible, but a win for the ruling party can not.
I welcome the opportunity to elaborate on what is meant by a free and fair election. Many people believe that this depends on what happens on the voting day or days. However, this is far from the truth. The SADC Parliamentary Forum tackled the question of what makes a free and fair election and produced recommendations which were accepted by SADC. The criteria which they outline make it clear that the actual voting on polling day is only the final step in conducting a free and fair election. Many other conditions necessary to a free and fair election must be in place long before the voting day. Unfortunately I cannot do justice to the long list of recommendations in this short space. I will only mention a few.
1. An independent and impartial Electoral commission which recuits its own personnel should oversee the election. In Zimbabwe, all members of the Electoral Supervisory Commission are appointed by the President without consultation. The present chairman is an ex-colonel in the army, a war veteran and identified with ZANU PF. Most of the personnel recently seconded to the ESC staff are acting military officers, while others are retired army officers and some are members of the Central Intelligence Organisation, a thoroughly partisan security wing or government. This cannot be an independent body.
2. All parties must have equal access to the media.
In Zimbabwe private radio and television companies have not been granted licences and the state media have not given the opposition an opportunity to flight campaign material. Newscasts and many other programmes are taken up by blatantly pro-ZANU PF material.
3. All parties must be free to campaign throughout the country. Campaign meetings must be permitted and Presidential candidates must be provided with free and adequate security.
In many areas in Zimbabwe, the opposition has been prevented from campaigning at all. When they try to enter an area they are attacked by militia trained by government or by war veterans or ZANU PF youth. Many have been injured and some killed. The police stand and watch. People who live in these areas have been tortured and driven from their houses if they are suspected of belonging to the opposition. In other areas, the opposition has been denied permission to hold campaign meetings by the police, while in no place has ZANU PF been prevented from holding rallies. Last week, the leader of the opposition could not hold a rally because the police refused to provide security and all those who tried to reach the venue were driven back by attacks by ZANU PF youth. The police did nothing
4. Ballot boxes should be transparent, replacing opaque wooden ones.
The Zimbabwe government still uses the opaque wooden ones whose bottoms can be unscrewed. They have refused an offer by a foreign government to help them by providing transparent boxes free of charge.
On all of the above counts, the conduct of our elections falls far short of the criteria set by SADC. To these must be added many more events which create conditions which are unfavourable to the opposition. Militia made up of unemployed youths have been given the briefest of training and deployed to all parts of the country. Their purpose appears to be to terrorise the population, instilling fear which will induce people to vote for ZANU PF or not to vote at all, They set up illegal roadblocks, beat and torture and confiscate identity documents required for voting. Many thousands of farm workers have been driven from their homes, meaning that they will be deprived of their vote in a system which requires one to vote in the place where they are registered. I could also mention the chaotic state of the electoral roll containing names of thousands of dead people while there has been wholesale removal of eligible voteres from the roll.
I also find it disturbing that anyone can suggest that if voting happens to be peaceful on polling days all of these obstacles to free and fair elections can simply be discounted. With all of these events preceding the 2002 Zimbabwe Presidential election it is simply not possible to consider the whole process free and fair, whatever happens on polling days. And this fact will not change whoever wins.
What emerges then, and this is what most observer teams eventually resort to, is to decide whether an election is credible or believable. Whether you believe something or not is to some extent subjective. However, given the obstacles mentioned above, it would be possible to say that a win for the opposition would be credible, but a win for the ruling party which has dealt a deck stacked in its favour, will not.
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