International unease has mounted over the re-election of Africa's oldest
leader, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, in polls denounced by the
country's opposition as 'stolen.' President Robert Mugabe, who has been
in power since 1980, beat his main rival Morgan Tsvangirai in
Wednesday's polls garnering 61 percent of the presidential vote. His
party also secured a substantial parliamentary majority. But Tsvangirai,
61, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who has
unsuccessfully tried to unseat Mugabe three times, condemned the vote as
'fraudulent and stolen' and has vowed to challenge it in court. DW:
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said he will challenge the decision in
court. Do you think that MDC will have any success? Eddie Cross: We will
challenge the presidential ballot and we will challenge a number of
constituencies at the same time. The principle motivation for doing this
is not in anticipation of getting a decent decision from the courts,
because the courts themselves are compromised in serious way, but is to
put everything on record, legally. What would be the next step? We
expect the court to delay the swearing in of the president for at least a
month. What the SADC states and the African Union delegation here have
said over the weekend is that they will give us a month to present a
substantive evidence of the rigging of this election. And Obasanjo, the
former president of Nigeria, has said specifically that if we can
demonstrate that the poll was rigged to the extent of 25 percent that in
fact would justify invalidating the election and calling for fresh
elections and that's our goal, that's our immediate objective. SADC was
very quick to come out and say that the election went pretty fine and
the African Union did likewise. Do you really think they would change
their mind if you come up with evidence that the elections were
manipulated? If you read the actual reports of both organizations, the
reports themselves are actually fine. We have no problem - particularly
with the report of African Union.It is a very good document, it is
technically sound. And it is just what I told you - that this election
was seriously flawed, it does not reflect the views of the people and it
also details how it was done. The remarks that you were referring to
were verbal remarks by the chairmen of the two observer missions at a
press conference the day after the election. I think both of them are
regretting their preliminary statements, because I think it is beginning
to dawn on them the seriousness of the situation here. The results are
simply unbelievable. And you probably saw the call by Australia, Britain
and the United States, that they should be a re-run of the election and
that this result is not credible. Heads of state of the SADC will meet
on Wednesday in Malawi and I think they are going to have a very
different perspective at that meeting. Last time round SADC and South
Africa in particular, were rather taking a line of saying let's work
together, MDC and ZANU-PF. If this time around they would again make
that recommendation and say let's try to form some sort of a coalition
government, do you think the MDC could agree to that? Our position
would be very clear. What we would call for is that we just keep the
present government, which is the government of the national unity, in
place as a caretaker administration until a fresh election can be
organized. The new election would have to meet certain criteria. We will
demand a completely independent, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC),
for example, the present ZEC is totally compromised. We will demand a
brand new voters' roll, probably a biometric roll produced by a
commercial firm rather than a department of government. We would demand
the reforms that were not implemented prior to this election and which
had been agreed in the Global Political Agreement: security sector
reform, media reform and so on. And only then, would we then go into a
second election. And this time we would repudiate the results of this
election completely and ask for a fresh ballot on all seats that were up
contesting in the past election. You said that you want to work through
the courts, that you want to talk to the SADC and the African Union, on
the hand there are reports that some MDC members want to take more
confrontational approach and call for a campaign of civil disobedience.
Is there sort of a split in the party over how to deal with the
situation now? No, I attended the meeting of the national executive on
Saturday and a meeting of all MPs on Sunday. And our resolution was
absolutely unanimous, we have decided to go the route that we have
announced, in other words, we are pursuing both the political and a
legal challenge. We are not contemplating in any sense any kind of mass
action. The reason for that is that we believe that the security forces
here would then anticipate such an action and in fact would take very
harsh measures against us. We are simply not prepared to expose our
people to that kind of abuse, where we don't really see it achieving any
thing, in fact it might just be what the regime wants from us. They
would want to see an Egyptian-type solution where people go out on the
streets and then the military would take charge and then we really are
in trouble. We don't want the military anywhere near political control
here. We want to remain with authority in civilian hands and we will
strive very hard to keep it that way. What we need is a fresh election.
Supposing SADC and the AU don't put any pressure on the government to
organize a fresh election and you hit a dead end. What are you going to
do then? Then we will have a really serious problem, if ZABU-PF is
allowed assume total authority which they in fact haven't secured as a
result of this election. Their track record shows that they simply they
will not hesitate to abuse that authority. And if they will re introduce
Zimbabwe dollar and reintroduce the exchange control and price control
and all the things that we suffered from prior to 2008, the economy will
simply be going to a nose dive, and I can't see Zimbabwe surviving a
second round of a crisis of that nature. And if that happens, then South
Africa will be subject to an influx of Zimbabwean refugees as they were
before. And I think that would destabilize South Africa itself. So I
really don't think really is a sustainable solution. Eddie Cross is a
Member of Parliament for Bulawayo South and a founding member of the
Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe. Interview: Daniel Pelz
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