Build Zimbabwe Alliance leader Noah Manyika has said that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC)’s first response to reports of postal voting in Bulawayo are reminiscent of the worst days of Robert Mugabe’s rule when everything was blamed on enemies. Manyika was responding to Zec’s initial response when it had dismissed reports of postal voting as hogwash and stupid propaganda. However, Zec later made a huge climbdown and admitted that postal voting was indeed taking place. We publish the statement from Manyika in full below.
The response from ZEC published in The Herald suggesting that those who are expressing their anger at the illegal voting by police at Ross Camp in Bulawayo were malcontents hell bent on causing alarm and despondency reminds us of the worst days of the Mugabe regime. During this era, everything was blamed on enemies seeking to bring about regime change.
We were supposed to be past this now after November 2017, but clearly, nothing has changed. Contrary to ZEC’s claims that nothing was going on, the police themselves have confirmed that they were actually voting.
If ZEC did not know that this was going on then there is something terribly wrong as they are the body responsible for the conduct of the elections, not the police. The people of Zimbabwe are not blind to this, and any person who genuinely loves our country and feels for what people are going through, including the international observers who are supposedly here to ensure that we have a free and fair plebiscite must roundly condemn this.
While they are at it, they must also ask why it is necessary to have the kind of police presence I witnessed in Lupane today where ED Mnangagwa is addressing a rally. November 2017 is supposed to have ended our days as a police state, but apparently, the people of Matabeleland North need visible reminders that those days can return just like that.
What this country needs is irreversible change and we have a responsibility that it happens once and for all in this season.
Source: Pindula
