Western ploy to discredit Zim poll August 6 2013 at 08:03am By Sam Ditshego ------------------------------ [image: IOL sa mdc challenge0]
REUTERS Zimbabwe s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai will go to court to challenge an election victory by President Robert Mugabe s Zanu-PF party, which the Movement for Democratic Change rejects as fraudulent. Related Stories - Zimbabwe now back to square one<http://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/opinion/zimbabwe-now-back-to-square-one-1.1557537> - Mugabe’s free but unfair win<http://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/mugabe-s-free-but-unfair-win-1.1557211> - We have been fighting Mugabe alone<http://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/we-have-been-fighting-mugabe-alone-1.1557198> - Zim’s future rests on observers’ shoulders<http://www.iol.co.za/the-star/zim-s-future-rests-on-observers-shoulders-1.1555345> *People who rig their own votes should not be aiming ballot box brickbats at Zimbabwe, says Sam Ditshego.* Johannesburg - The local and international media were replete with stories of President Robert Mugabe rigging elections. They have even personalised the whole thing. They do not refer to Zanu-PF – they say or write Mugabe this, Mugabe that. They do not even say or write “President” or Mr Mugabe. They did the same with the executed former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. They no longer referred to the political party he led, the Ba’ath Party. I doubt if some of the journalists, commentators and analysts knew the name of his party. Let me share part of a study conducted on opposition parties in Africa. The study says there are many instances where opposition parties boycott elections simply to discredit the incumbents, and when they realise that their chance of winning is low. Could this be the strategy the Movement for Democratic Change, the US and Britain employed ahead of last week’s Zimbabwe elections – by predicting that they would be rigged – to discredit Zanu-PF? The study also revealed that, between 1990 and 2001, almost 30 percent of all elections in sub-Saharan Africa were boycotted by at least one opposition party. It is interesting to note that even in those elections which were declared “free and fair”, the losers accepted the result only 40 percent of the time. After reviewing 54 elections in sub-Saharan Africa, it is claimed that in 33 the major opposition parties rejected the results immediately. Out of these 33 cases, in 25 instances the losers challenged the results in court. Only in rare instances (Mali 1977, Benin 1996, Madagascar 2001) did opposition parties’ legal appeals win favourable court rulings. However, only in one case (Madagascar 2001) was the election result wholly overturned by the court. In 25 cases, protests occurred following the elections. To sum up, it was argued in the study that though election boycotts could be useful to expose the misdeeds of the ruling parties, at the same time they had a negative effect on opposition parties. Repeated election boycotts by the opposition would allow incumbents to control parliament. Moreover, the international community regarded political boycotts with high suspicion except in the most extraordinary circumstances, the study concluded. However, in the case of Zimbabwe the West always judges election results negatively. There were accusations that the ANC rigged the 1994 elections in South Africa, but the West says nothing about that because it knows that under the ANC its interests are safeguarded. President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF won last week’s presidential and the parliamentary elections comfortably and the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai cried foul. The US and Britain also cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results. Are elections in Zimbabwe going to be regarded as free and fair only when Tsvangirai’s MDC has won? What about the elections in the US? Are they free and fair? They are controlled by companies that own the voting machines and refuse to have them checked and examined. No party can challenge election results successfully in the US. The US’s Electoral College is not democratic. The US sees a splinter in Zimbabwe’s eye but does not see a log in its own. The US and most Western countries are oligarchies and plutocracies. They are ruled by a few rich people. Moreover, the US held rigged elections in some countries the same way it did in Korea where General John R Hodge, commander of the US Occupation Forces, held a rigged election during its division into North and South. The US is the last country that should moralise about rigged elections. In Africa the first political parties that were voted into power, especially post-independence political parties, latched on to power and did not want to relinquish even an iota of it. Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa provide good case studies. Many of the post-independence regimes in Africa were removed from office through military coups, but the military regimes also became corrupt and were in turn toppled. However, the US and some Western countries toppled regimes that were not pliant, not only on the continent but also in Asia and Latin America. Examples abound; the regimes of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala in 1954, José Antonio Remón of Panama in 1955, Patrice Lumumba in 1961 and Kwame Nkrumah in 1966. Other popular leaders who were believed to have been assassinated by the US were Jorge Eliécer Gaitán of Colombia in 1948 and Kim Koo of Korea in 1949, Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique in 1969 and Amilcar Cabral of Cape Verde in 1973. Finally, Zimbabwe is probably the only sovereign country on the African continent which most Africans are proud of. It is not under US and British tutelage and trusteeship. Zimbabwe does not need to be lectured on how to run elections by the imperialist and corrupt US and EU governments or condemned for rigging elections by the riggers of elections in their own countries as well as in foreign lands. * Sam Ditshego is a researcher at the Pan Africanist Research Institute. ** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers. *The Star* -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. 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