Former Cabinet Minister, Professor Jonathan Moyo has reiterated that the current political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe was triggered by the ‘illegally conducted’ 2018 elections.
Speaking on a live Facebook public lecture titled ‘Unpacking the Crisis in Zimbabwe Who is who and what is what’ Moyo said a report before parliament by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission showed the elections were not properly conducted.
“As much as people might want to keep coming up with pretentious or self-serving definitions of the crisis in Zimbabwe, or choose to deny that there’s a crisis, the unavoidable bottom line is that the crisis in the country is defined by the consent crisis triggered by an electoral system in which there’s no relationship between the vote cast and the vote counted.
“This is reflected by the unjust outcomes of the votes cast in the 2018 presidential and parliamentary elections. Regarding the 2018 presidential election, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) tabled its Report in Parliament on 27 June 2019, as required under section 241 of the Constitution, in which it made it clear, perhaps inadvertently or perhaps out of incompetence but helpfully so, that it did not conduct the presidential poll in accordance with the peremptory provisions of sections 37C (4) and 110 of the Electoral Act,” said Prof Moyo.
He said despite the Constitutional Court ruling that declared President Emmerson Mnangagwa winner of the elections, it did too little to pacify the illegality of the plebiscite.
“An illegally run election cannot produce a legal outcome because legality cannot result from illegality. I deal with this issue extensively in Excelgate. The rights of the voter were abused by ZEC’s illegal conduct of the presidential election and the violation was made worse by the ConCourt’s endorsement of the illegality. If this is not resolved, the crisis in Zimbabwe will persist and even worsen, and there would be no point in pressing for political or electoral reforms ahead of the harmonised elections scheduled for 2023; nor there be any point in participating in those elections,” he said.
Prof Moyo claimed that the judiciary and ZEC had a clear mandate to deprive the MDC Alliance of the presidential and parliamentary votes by any method possible as evidenced by the Chegutu West 2018 election outcome.
“Talking about ZEC and the judiciary in Zimbabwe, it is staggering that although Dexter Nduna lost the 2018 parliamentary election Chegutu West, he remains the MP for the constituency. Nduna knows he lost; ZEC not only knows that Nduna lost but also that he lost as a result of a counting error by ZEC and the judiciary knows that ZEC made a counting error in favor of Nduna.
“If ZEC and the judiciary can allow this injustice, placing the responsibility to correct on the MDC-A candidate who won the constituency, and relying on a technicality that the winner’s lawyers did not follow the correct procedure in seeking to correct ZEC’s error, then the public in general and the electorate, in particular, do not need the services of a rocket scientist to show that the disposition of ZEC and the judiciary has been to dispossess the MDC-A of its presidential and parliamentary votes by hook or crook.
“With Nduna’s Chegutu West case in mind, what is there in the Zimbabwe electoral system to stop ZEC and the judiciary from facilitating electoral theft? Of course, nothing. What is incomprehensible is the silence of the rest of society over this unprecedented attack and abuse of the right to vote. Why is the public not outraged?” said Prof Moyo.
