Staff Reporter

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has slammed the West saying he would not tolerate foreign interference in Zimbabwe’s electoral democracy.

Writing in his weekly column in The Sunday Mail yesterday, President Mnangagwa said time would come when Zimbabwe would not accept the West’s measurement of its electoral democracy.

“The time will soon come when we will not accept that condescending and even racist view of a pecking order when it comes to measuring electoral democracy unfolding in our sovereign countries, and which in any event is meant for our people. A pecking order with white super-dogs who must observe elections of lesser beings on the one side, and black underdogs whose polls must be observed, passed or failed, on the other.

“Nothing about our chequered colonial history justifies that false hierarchy, nothing in present international rules legitimises that presumptuous supremacy. The theory and practice of election observation must be on the basis of equality and reciprocity among nations. Anything less and one-sided diminishes and creates a deep sense of bruise and injury to our sovereignty,” said President Mnangagwa.

Additionally, President Mnangagwa emphasised that Zimbabwe didn’t need anyone to lecture it on democracy.

“Our sights are set higher: to show the world and especially censorious countries of the West that Zimbabwe is a self-made African democracy. It owes its democracy to itself; it, therefore, does not need tutors or lessons in democracy delivered by those coming to us from afar. It is its own teacher, its own model, the sole guardian and guarantor of its own democratic processes and practices. Indeed, the writer of its own history in clean, democratic electoral praxis,” said President Mnangagwa.

Meanwhile, political analyst, Terrence Chipwanya highlighted the double standards by the west especially Britain, stating that the former coloniser is now claiming to be a defender of democracy.

“Our former coloniser is now coming back to us claiming to be defenders of democracy, but they continue day and night to pursue nefarious agendas to undermine our independence, sovereignty and freedom,” said Chipwanya.