Zimbabwe Europe Network - There should be No endorsement of the Zimbabwe election results

A peaceful election is not necessarily a credible election

However, a peaceful election is not necessarily a credible election, and the absence of violence does not make an election free and fair.

Based on the (preliminary) reports by the AU and SADC observer missions, as well as the findings by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and others, the Zimbabwe Europe Network seriously questions the credibility, freeness, and fairness of the elections. There are strong indications that the electoral process has been severely manipulated, well before the actual voting day.

Several shortcomings in the preparations of the elections as well as during the polling day confirmed previous doubts about the preparedness of ZEC to conduct free and fair elections. Besides the lack of electoral reforms ahead of the elections, ZEN is seriously concerned about:

• The refusal of ZEC to release the Voters' Roll to the contesting political parties, other interested parties (such as the observer missions) and the public. This meant no independent verification by parties and public of the accuracy of the electoral roll could take place.
• As a result, previous fears about the state of the Voters' Roll turned out to be justified on election day, as many registered voters were turned away. This seemingly systematic trend at many polling stations disenfranchised a huge number of voters (claims as high as 750.000 voters)
• The number of assisted voters was abnormally high, with reports of people being intimidated to ask for assistance.
• The printing of an extra two million ballot papers (35% more than needed, whereas 5% is the international standard)
• Reports of people having multiple registration slips and/or being bussed in to vote in specific constituencies.
• The location of some polling stations only being announced at the last minute.

In line with our Zimbabwean civil society partners we therefore urge ZEC to urgently release statistics of assisted voters per polling station, statistics of people turned away per polling station nationwide and the reasons thereof, and the total number of people who voted using voter registration slips per polling station nationwide.

If the irregularities reported are indeed not on scale to overturn the will of the people, it should not be a problem to release these figures. A refusal to do so would in our mind confirm the claims of Zimbabwean civil society that these elections were illegitimate and not reflective of the will of the people.

We also support the call upon the Registrar General of Voters to immediately release the electronic copy of the voters' roll to all interested parties.

We therefore welcome the call by the Botswana Government for an independent audit of the elections and urge the international community to support this call, and until further investigations have been concluded to be very wary of endorsing the results of the elections.

Finally, we urge all parties to show restraint in this post-election environment, and to act in support of the will of the people of Zimbabwe.

For further information contact
Steve Kibble (0044 77 42 67 76 54, stevekibbledoc@yahoo.com) or.
Hugo Knoppert (0031 6 52 30 77 22, secr@zimbabwewatch.org)