Former Cabinet Minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo has scoffed at President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s call for election observers to be objective, saying it is an act against and outside the law.
By Costa Nkomo
President Mnangagwa made the remarks during the burial of the late John Chimbandi at the national heroes’ acre in Harare on Sunday.
“Allow me to encourage those who are coming to observe our elections to acquaint themselves with our electoral laws and institutional arrangements so that they honestly determine and weigh any demands and complaints from whatever quarter against reasonableness in terms of our law,” President Mnangagwa said.
However, Moyo said President Mnangagwa had no right to call foreign or local election observers to be objective in their assessment of the environment in the run-up to the harmonised elections slated for 30 July this year.
“As the brutal Chief Enforcer of the Old Order, for 38 years, Mnangagwa has no right to order local or foreign election observers to do or not to do anything. He’s acting outside and against the law. He must stop it!,” said Moyo in his microblogging post, Twitter, yesterday.
Former minister of Finance during the Government of National Unity (GNU) 2009-2013, Tendai Biti weighed in charging that the head of state’s remarks were a reflection of panicky given how his competitor, Nelson Chamisa continue to draw crowds to himself.
“Those are the remarks from someone who is now afraid. Those are the reactions of someone who is panicking,” said Biti.
President Mnangagwa’s objective remarks to the election observers comes on the back of International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) comprising the former US congressman David Drier and former chairperson of the South African election commission, Brigalia Bam, who submitted to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) asking the electoral body to effect reforms which are the same the opposition parties demand.
Zimbabwe is due to hold harmonised polls on the 30th of July 2018.
