NCA threatens mass action if govt shuns free, fair poll proposals

The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) said it would mobilise Zimbabweans to embark on mass action, and would also lobby international support against the government, if it refused to implement the NCA’s proposals to guarantee free and fair presidential polls scheduled for next year, the ‘Financial Gazette’ reported on Thursday.

NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku said the implementation of minimum requirements needed to guarantee free and fair elections was a matter of life and death for the NCA and that the civic group would not back down. “We won’t give up. We will die on that one,” he was quoted as saying. Madhuka said the NCA would present two options to the government.

“The first option will be for the government to adopt and enact our draft constitution which we will present to them by December. The draft constitution has permanent mechanisms to guarantee free and fair elections. If for some reason the government decides to postpone the issue of the constitution until after the presidential elections, then it would have to implement the minimum requirements that we have suggested for the holding of free and fair elections. That will be a fair compromise and we will agree to that,” he told the ‘Financial Gazette’.

Madhuka added that if the government did not adopt the NCA constitution, the organisation wanted an independent electoral commission to run the elections. He said that the NCA wanted the voters roll to be updated and verified well in advance of the elections and for equal air time and space to be given to the opposition in the public media. “It’s either that the government enacts the new constitution or effects these minimum requirements or we will take to the streets,” Madhuku said.

He said the NCA would also lobby the United Nations, the Commonwealth, the European Union and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to apply pressure on the government to ensure the implementation of the minimum conditions. The NCA wanted to make representations on these issues to the SADC leaders from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Malawi and Mozambique who met in Harare on the land crisis this week, but was excluded from civic groups which met the leaders, the report said.