Stop abusing us, ZEC tells political parties

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is not bothered by threats from opposition political parties that yesterday announced that they were disengaging from voluntary meetings under the banner of ZEC-Political Parties Dialogue Platform.

This came up after ZEC chairperson Justice Rita Makarau, together with other commissioners and the ZEC secretariat, walked out of a meeting with the parties in protest against continued "abuse at the hands of some political parties".

"We accept fair criticism, yes, balanced and fair criticism," said Justice Makarau at the meeting. We have always welcomed that. We say no to abuse by anybody, political parties or any other stakeholder. And because we are beginning to feel that our engagements are being misunderstood, we believe it is time for ZEC to go back to the drawing board and see how best we can engage with you.

"This platform is not working according to ZEC. Accordingly, there will be no meeting today. You thought we had called you to intimidate you into not demonstrating. We want to give you our assurances that we have not called you to intimidate you from doing anything.

"We called you to dialogue, but you do not want to dialogue with us in good faith. This meeting is aborted and I am asking everybody within ZEC to please follow me outside."

Justice Makarau cited some articles in the private media where some political parties' representatives were impugning the commission without restraint.

Some of the articles were titled "Opposition parties lose confidence in ZEC", "We will not be pacified by ZEC meeting: Nera" and "Tension rises as 2018 looms".

The parties then resolved to, among other things, discontinue meetings with ZEC, to declare "an electoral stalemate and crisis" and that Justice Makarau steps down, while ZEC is disbanded.

They said they wanted Sadc, the African Union and the United Nations to take the lead in the running of the elections.

MDC-T secretary-general Mr Douglas Mwonzora, who is the spokesperson of the Political Parties Platform read the resolutions.

But zanu-pf representative in the platform, Kizito Kuchekwa, who is director for the commissariat, distanced the revolutionary party from the resolutions.

"Let this be clear that this is a position of NERA, not political parties," he said. What I seem to notice is that you want to assume that every party here is either National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) or Coalition of Democrats (CODE), which is very wrong.

"There are many of us political parties here who are neither NERA nor CODE. We are not part of the demonstrations you are talking about. We think it's very wrong that political parties can assemble here at ZEC headquarters to plot against ZEC. I now understand ZEC, where it's having problems with political parties. We thought the demonstration that NERA or CODE is talking about is against Government.

"But it is clear from statements in here that the demonstration is directed against Makarau and ZEC, which we think in those circumstances, this dialogue cannot continue. I would understand the position that ZEC has taken."

Chaos also ensued as the opposition parties did not agree on the way forward, with some of them questioning the viability of calling for the disbandment of ZEC, while others asked whether or not they should first consult their principals before coming up with a resolution.

In an interview with The Herald after the aborted meeting, Justice Makarau said the political parties did not appreciate the dialogue platform between them and ZEC.

"They abuse us as ZEC," she said. "Today's meeting was just a regular one, so, it is wrong for some political parties to then say we have summoned them to stop tomorrow's demonstration.

"We won't be abused any further. It was on the basis of the Press reports, especially at the weekend that resulted in us aborting the meeting."