It looks like Zanu-PF pulled the rabbit out of the hat yet again! What a shock!
It's like they left themselves 36 runs from the final over and the Croc smacked 6 consecutive Mugabe Maximums!
And what makes it worse, we know it was rigged and we can't do anything about it.
Zimbabwe will never improve. I hope Mnangagwa does a better job of governing the country that Mugabe
How rigged was the vote though? I think many in the west underestimate the level of support for ZANU-PF. The MDC have hardly been the most well-organised opposition either.
Neil Johnson, Alistair Campbell, Murray Goodwin, Andy Flower (w), Grant Flower, Dave Houghton, Guy Whittall, Heath Streak (c), Andy Blignaut, Ray Price, Eddo Brandes
All this could have been avoided if ZEC had announced the result of the presidential vote, they have blood on their hands.
The “unofficial” result is that Chamisa won 64% of the vote.
One of the burning questions is how does Zanu win 73% of the parliamentary vote but their party leader loses the presidential one.
I find it impossible to believe that a Zanu supporter will vote for a Zanu MP, but then will vote for an MDC President- you’re either a party faithful or you aren’t. Find me a Zanu stalwart that voted for two candidates from different parties and I will eat my underpants.
Quite a few people have been shot. It’s a disaster.
How rigged was the vote though? I think many in the west underestimate the level of support for ZANU-PF. The MDC have hardly been the most well-organised opposition either.
About 22% (i might be wrong on the exact figure) of V11 forms were not displayed as they should have been. Many people who were registered to vote were told they were not on the voters role and not allowed to vote. The electoral roll was also only sent to ZANU before the election when by law it should be sent to all parties. There was also smaller issues such adequate lighting being provided, voters being prevented from voting through silly reasons and then delaying the process so they could not vote before the 6/7pm end of voting. One polling station said they only had one ruler and therefore could not process all the registered voters.
It should also not take this long for presidential results to be tallied. They are counted the same time as parliamentary results. V11 forms that were counted show a Chamisa win by some margin, but without all V11 forms being produced, it is hard to get an accurate count and know what is happening with those stations where the forms are not being shown or are being hidden.
Its a tough one. A lot of lies are being spread by both sides to be honest. The V-11 form thing is a myth. The people who initially published that have since removed it from their report. People have to understand that the MDC had over 40 000 polling agents. Every agent that was observing had to sign off on the results at every polling station. The winners can only be announced after verification of those forms and everybody signs off on them. So in other words the MDC signed off on those parliamentary results just like every other party did. There was one constituency where the v-11 forms didnt tally up properly and the MDC candidate protested and it was overturned.
You will notice Chamisa tweeted at 3am after the election that based on the information from the 10000 polling stations he had won. That information could have only come from their personal copies of the v-11 forms that his 40000 agents had copies of. He has since deleted that post which is very suspicious to me.
If 21% of the forms were really missing dont you think he would have actually been protesting about that instead of claiming victory? There is no way you can claim victory if a fifth of the votes are missing. Something is off about that whole scenario.
It is also highly unlikely that you can sign off on losing 70% of parliament and expect to win the presidential vote. Even if he did win he cant possibly govern a country when he controls 30% of parliament.
I think the MDC spread as many lies as ZANU and are probably just as stupid. MDC Would have easily won some seats had they presented a united front. Instead they are splitting the opposition vote allowing Zanoids to win in electorates where they enjoy only 40% support.
Neil Johnson, Alistair Campbell, Murray Goodwin, Andy Flower (w), Grant Flower, Dave Houghton, Guy Whittall, Heath Streak (c), Andy Blignaut, Ray Price, Eddo Brandes
The bottom line is this- there’s only one reason why ZEC has not announced the result which proves their lack of impartiality, not that proof was required.
MDC made the announcement that they’d won to make the inevitable shenanigans more difficult, the observers are here and the world is watching, if they’d followed orders to not make an official announcement it would have probably been a peaceful and bloodless robbery. Frankly these SADC observers are an old boys club that have rubber stamped our elections repeatedly and it’s a charade. Biti and Chamisa are wanted for questioning and they must be terrified because their lives are in real danger. Did they deliberately incite the demonstrations yesterday? Quite possibly. I’m not condoning any of this but if you repeatedly play by the rules and your opposition doesn’t the outcome is inevitable.
Will there be more today and will it be confined to Harare?
ZEC will be under real pressure to provide the results today and who knows what chaos that’s going to cause.
There’s a chance that they will attempt to go for a rerun and again I don’t know how that will be received. I think it’s clear that intimidation will be the order of the day if that happens.
The President has sweeping powers and even a hostile parliament is no hurdle. The fact is we’ve been a military state even prior to the coup that wasn’t a coup and I’d say we’re about to see some strong arm tactics.
In the almost impossible event of Chamisa being made the President is he the right guy for the job? I’m not sure that it matters, despite us having had “democratic” elections for many years we all know it’s been a sham. We’ve effectively been a one party state because they’ve used all state resources to keep any opposition at manageable levels. This country fought for freedom at a terrible cost to us all, and they believed for many years that they were free because they were allowed to vote and they were free of the white man’s yoke, but they’ve learned it was a false dawn. You are only free when you’ve been liberated from the liberators.