IRIN Focus on the election

Ending weeks of expectation and speculation, President Robert Mugabe has announced that the country’s parliamentary elections will be held on the weekend of June 24 and 25. The announcement The announcement was made on Tuesday in the official daily, ‘The Herald’. Within hours of the news, the opposition Movement For Democratic Change (MDC), citing countrywide political violence over the occupation of white-owned farms and intimidation by supporters of Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party which has claimed 20 lives in the past two months, said it would take legal action to seek a postponement. “The June elections will be held to choose 120 MPs, who together with eight provincial governors, 10 chiefs and 12 non-constituency MPs appointed by the President, will constitute the new Parliament of Zimbabwe,” ‘The Herald’ said referring to the fact that Mugabe will personally appoint 30 of the parliament’s 150 members. “President Mugabe signed the proclamation yesterday morning following indications by the chairman of the delimitation Commission, Justice Sandura, that the commission had completed its work. Comrade Mugabe has already received the commission’s interim report,” it said. The opposition has accused Mugabe of launching an intimidation campaign after his party lost a referendum in February over a new constitution that would have entrenched Mugabe’s powers and allow him to seize white-owned land without compensation. It marked his biggest political defeat during the 20 years he and ZANU-PF have held power in Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980. The vote The 120 new MPs to be chosen are elected under a winner-takes-all system. According to Zimbabwean election watchers, average turnout in parliamentary and presidential elections since 1985 has not topped 20 percent. This turnout, however, increased to 26 percent in the February referendum. ZANU-PF currently holds 147 seats, with two seats held by ZANU Ndonga, a breakaway group of veteran nationalist Ndabaningi Sithole. Margaret Dongo, the human rights activist, holds the other seat. The opposition The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai, has emerged as the strongest challenger to Mugabe after spearheading the successful referendum campaign against the ruling party’s proposed constitution. The MDC has said the climate of intimidation is preventing effective campaigning, thereby making free and fair elections impossible. The score of people killed include 16 MDC supporters and four farmers, who lost their lives in violence at political rallies and during the occupation of more than 700 white-owned farms by ZANU-PF supporters led by independence war veterans. The MDC, however, said it would participate in the elections despite its reservations about the fairness and freeness of the polls. “It is impossible to have free and fair elections under the present conditions, but we cannot extend the suffering of the people under ZANU-PF any longer,” said Welshman Ncube a senior MDC leader. An MDC elections official told IRIN on Tuesday that his party was heading for the polls with its hands tied because of the intimidation of its supporters by the ruling party. “The international community must deploy observers for the elections as soon as possible. This could help minimise intimidation,” the official said. But in a recent interview with IRIN Jonathan Moyo, chief strategist of the ruling ZANU-PF party insisted that there was no intimidation, and that the election would go ahead as planned. The reports of violence, he added, had been “hyped” by the international media. “Zimbabwe is calm, and life is normal,” Moyo said. Commonwealth, EU to send observers Officials of the Commonwealth and the European Union (EU) visiting the country for talks with Mugabe and the opposition this week said they planned to send observers to monitor the election. Don McKinnon, Commonwealth’s secretary general, said on Tuesday after meeting Mugabe he believed it possible a free and fair election could be held despite the violence. Legal challenge But the MDC said it would launch a legal challenge to have the election date postponed. The party argued that since the delimitation commission has not yet drawn up voting districts, opposition candidates did not know in what districts they would be standing. “Until that has happened, the election process cannot start,” MDC legal adviser David Coltart was quoted as saying. He said the MDC would file papers with the High court on Wednesday to postpone the election date until the commission has finished its work. According to Mugabe’s announcement in the government gazette, all candidates must be registered by 29 May to run for the parliamentary seats. But the official announcement in ‘The Herald’ said: “Nomination courts shall sit at Mashonganyika Building in Harare and magistrates courts in Bulawayo, Gweru, Mutare, Masvingo, Bindura, Gwanda, Marondera and Chinhoyi to receive nominations of candidates on May 29.” It said that the government was aware of the situation regarding constituency boundaries. “The surveyor general will soon demarcate the constituencies on the map. The announcement of the election dates puts paid to fears, especially in the international community, that the polls were going to be put off indefinitely.” The issues The main issues being debated in Zimbabwe are the land reform crisis, the costly deployment of more than 12,000 troops supporting the government of President Laurent-Desiré Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and an economic crisis mired in critical fuel shortages, high unemployment, rampant inflation and a growing budget deficit. Land redistribution Mugabe’s government, following its defeat in the February referendum, has elevated the issue of land redistribution to landless peasants to centre stage of the country’s political landscape, analysts in Zimbabwe told IRIN. When the war veterans and ZANU-PF supporters invaded white-owned land, Mugabe publicly supported the invasions despite court orders for the police to evict the invaders. The MDC cited a carefully orchestrated government operation on the farms where large numbers of the victims of recent violence were farm employees. After the voters rejected the proposed constitution, ZANU-PF, nevertheless, pushed through a constitutional amendment in parliament allowing commercial farming land to be confiscated by government without compensation. Analysts said although Zimbabwe’s 14 million people fully support the principle of land redistribution, there is, however, dissatisfaction because press reports have said some farms already purchased by the government were given to members of the ruling party, their friends and relatives. The DRC war Many Zimbabweans, said analysts, have been angered by Mugabe’s decision to send troops to the Congo. Economists estimated Zimbabwe has been spending about US $1.7 million a month to maintain its soldiers in the DRC. The cost of the DRC involvement is also said to be partly responsible for the exhaustion of foreign exchange reserves and the fuel crisis. Economic decline The country’s economy has been on the decline mainly because of uncontrolled government spending, has led to an inflation rate of over 60 percent with 50 percent of the economicallly active population unemployed. With foreign payments arrears currently estimated at US $400 million, the failure to reduce government spending led the IMF and other international donors to suspend lending to the country, while bilateral donors also suspended programmes because of the government’s refusal to pay for white-owned land and alleged corruption. The shortage of foreign currency precipitated the country’s worst fuel crisis threatening the entire economic activity of the country. The state-owned fuel procurement agency, NOCZIM, has failed to secure further fuel supplies from creditors owed more than US $50 million. Agriculture, the country’s economic mainstay, was put under strain as farmers could not get their produce to domestic and international markets because of diesel and foreign currency shortages. At the same time, general economic activity was disrupted as people and businesses queued for hours at service stations to buy rationed supplies of fuel. The main damage to agriculture and food production, said economists, is posed by the continued occupation of the farms. Many of the farmers, said economists, would not be able to start planting this month because of the disruptions caused by the invasions, which would lead to a shortage of food and other crops like tobacco in the next harvesting season.