The jury is out on whether Zimbabwe is ready for elections later this year.
The SA Development Community’s Electoral Advisory Council will give its verdict in about two weeks time after completing a one-week visit to the country.
Zimbabwe is preparing to vote for a president, parliamentarians, and municipal councillors in July or August.
During its visit, the four-member SADC delegation met the ruling Zanu PF, other political parties, ambassadors from the region, media, and civic society organizations.
Delegation leader, Eswatini judge Ticheme Dlamini, says they achieved their mission.
Dlamini said, “the mission in our view was successful, we achieved what we set out to do and it was very informative and we are thankful to the stakeholders and we are grateful for the overwhelming responses.The report will be published very soon two weeks will be the maximum period,I think I will say it won’t take more than two weeks.”
The opposition Citizens Coalition for Change spent hours detailing its concerns, not least that the voters’ roll isn’t credible.
The Media Institute of Southern Africa had this to say about its meeting with the SADC delegations.
Tabani Moyo said, “it was quite a mutual and beneficial meeting to the people of Zimbabwe and media fraternity at large. And to brief our the mission our observations as MISA”
However some opposition political parties didn’t get a chance to meet the delegation, or to express their reasons for saying Zimbabwe is not ready for elections.
The People’s Progressive Party of Zimbabwe’s Timothy Chiguvare said, “when we look at SADC, we would like to register our unhappiness because we see that the Zanu PF government has no credentials to supervise or manage this important election.We as the opposition we are saying there is no hope for Zimbabwe until SADC,ECOWAS and Africa Union help us to break the unholy alliance between ruling party Zanu PF and the military.”
When Zimbabwe last held national elections in 2018, the results were disputed. It remains to be seen whether and how the SADC Electoral Advisory Council believes things will be different this time around.
Source: eNCA
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