ZIMBABWEANS go for their harmonised general elections on Wednesday, August 23 2023 as confirmed by Statutory Instrument 85, Proclamation 4 of 2023, published in the latest Government Gazette.
We hope the proclamation will put to bed weird stories, ostensibly meant to discredit the polls.
We expect political parties now to concentrate on selling their programmes and policies as they try to woo the vote of the electorate.
We also expect foreign observers to respect our sovereign status and related international conventions without meddling in our internal affairs.
We are satisfied that responsible bodies have made relevant preparations for the elections to go ahead.
Voter registration and education have been carried out by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
Let’s take this opportunity to advise America and its allies that we need no foreign assistance in this area.
Political parties have been given the opportunity to encourage their supporters to register to vote, with ZANU PF targeting five million registered voters.
Some noises could also be heard from the CCC as they also threw their nets to the electorate.
Zec has also completed the delimitation of constituencies and wards.
This is a complicated exercise and, as expected, some were not satisfied with the new boundaries. All was finally deemed satisfactory when the courts were invited to intervene.
With the constituency boundaries delimited, the next stage saw parties select their constituency and ward candidates.
ZANU PF chose the democratic process where party members secretly voted for their candidates.
We understand all is clear and constituency and ward candidates can be identified.
Regarding CCC, to the best of our knowledge, no clear picture of the winning candidates has yet come out.
Perhaps it is their way of avoiding infiltration by ZANU PF.
But then they must not cry foul if their supporters will not be familiar with their candidates, come voting day.
As a last preparatory step, voters are now inspecting the voters’ roll.
The purpose of inspection is to check if there are any errors on your name or it might even be missing.
Where so many people are involved, errors can be expected.
The strange language being used by some CCC members, claiming that some names were removed, is mischievous. Some mischief of a different nature is also emanating from the US Embassy.
Remember, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has already spoken very strongly against ‘racist and condescending practice’ of Western nations which treat other sovereign States as lesser beings when it comes to election observation.
Because of that, not all countries would be invited to future elections.
Is there a worse condescending behaviour than that displayed by some diplomats from the US Embassy who have brazenly lectured Zimbabweans on their country’s electoral process?
Just for a moment, imagine a sovereign nation splashing messages educating the electorate of the country hosting their Embassy how to vote!
“Register to vote and make your voice heard,” screamed one Twitter post authored by the US Embassy.
This clear interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign State is a breach of the Vienna Convention.
Surely this kind of behaviour makes the US a legitimate candidate to be excluded from observing our August 23 general elections.
True, the Americans might have their own biases in our elections.
But why can’t they keep that to themselves!
It’s natural that when the Republicans and the Democrats face each other in elections, we have our own biases.
The Americans are sovereign, just like us and we have no right whatsoever to dabble in their internal affairs.
After the proclamation, we are now all eagerly waiting for the party manifestos.
