by Chigumbu Warikandwa
The Zimbabwean social media terrain has, for the past three weeks, been pregnant with suspense, suspense driven by speculative talk of a rigged election. Rigging that never was.
The MDC Alliance, the losers-in-chief of this historic plebiscite rode social media wires with screaming stories and kindergarten folklore with a failed attempt to discredit the election outcome. For those who followed the court process yesterday, it came clear that the MDC Alliance was beaten hands down, both at the electoral field and at court.
With the dual defeat suffered by the floundering party, all eyes are on the Constitutional Court bench expected to sit this Friday, which is faced with a very easy task since the case was dissected wide open, exposing the weaknesses and strength of each of the legal adversaries in court.
In the past three weeks, the MDC Alliance blew both hot and cold, shouting in every ear that was available that they had damning evidence. In fact, damning is a small word to sufficiently describe the excitement with which Nelson Chamisa, leader of the Alliance, described the quality of his evidence. Rather, the youthful politician insinuated that he had poisonous evidence that was useful not only to discredit the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission alone, but to invalidate the election and install him as president.
Everyone’s high hopes were deflated to disappointing lows after it came clear in court that Chamisa was bereft of the very evidence that he harped about. He even showed that he lacked the primary source of a coherent legal challenge to a process as open as an election. The primary source of data according to the model of the Zimbabwean election is a summary form which is signed at polling station level by all interested parties holding official position to any election. This is called the V11 form and is available for scrutiny by all parties who naturally have representative agents in and outside every polling station. The party boasted of having mobilized 44000 agents to cover the 11000 polling station covering the country’s expanse.
But come results day, the party shows it failed to mobilise the claimed agents. It didn’t end there, it also failed to mobilise candidates enough to cover the 210 constituencies. In fact, whereas Zanu PF managed to field candidates for all the 210 parliamentary constituencies, the loud MDC party only managed 188, missing the target by a whopping 22 candidates! The number is even higher in council elections where 1958 wards were up for political competition. Zanu PF bagged 46 wards uncontested. Instead of investing its energies in political mobilisation, the party chose to dwell on ungainly talk. Failure of the MDC Alliance to field candidates in the said constituencies does not mean lack of interest in them but lack of political organisation useful to enable the party to contest. It ought to be remembered also that the party entered the election with truckloads of dirty linen soiled by a bloody power struggle pitting Chamisa and Thokozani Khupe.
Having forgotten that they failed to field candidates in all these where Zanu PF won uncontested, the MDC Alliance went about weeping and wailing around the village claiming they had been vexed by a 40000 difference in total votes cast between presidential and parliamentary elections. If anything, that 40000 figure is so very small considering the number of constituencies the party played truant with mobilisation.
“They (MDC Alliance) fumbled a lot and couldn’t field a candidate. Their factional fights show that they are not united and this is why they even failed to have a candidate contesting. Even in their presence . . . I felt no threat as I know that the people of our constituency will rally behind us. Now is the time to work and rebuild our country. Together we can, divided we fall,” said Cde Farai Taruvinga the uncontested Zanu PF candidate for Insiza North, Matabeleland South following his declaration as winner of the seat.
Advocate Thabani Mpofu, the lead counsel of the MDC Alliance’s multitude of lawyers, rumbled about in court with very little evidence to support his wanting argument. This leaves the bench with a very easy job on their hands to deliver an obvious verdict. Let’s meet at the ConCourt tomorrow at two o’clock.
