ZIMBABWE: POLLS MIGHT NOT LOOSEN ZANU-PF GRIP

SUMMARY

For the first time, Zimbabwe will attempt to conduct elections for the presidency, members of parliament, senators and local councillors on a single voting day. On past evidence of voter intimidation and counting irregularities by the ruling party, the prospects for a free and fair election do not appear high.

ELECTIONS WILL NOT BE FREE OR FAIR

As the March 29 general elections approach, the electoral playing field is tilted toward the government and away from the opposition:

• To adjust for increases in the number of parliamentary seats, a 2007 delimitation commission drew new voting boundaries to add rural constituencies, where the incumbent ZANU-PF is strong, and dilute the concentration of urban votes that usually favour the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
• As in Zimbabwe's 2002 presidential election, urban voters will confront a shortage of polling stations and could be turned away. Moreover, the voters' roll remains badly out-of-date, possibly manipulated, and practically inaccessible, even to contending parties.
• The state-controlled media continue to privilege the events and messages of the ruling party, ZANU-PF, covering opposition rallies in critical terms, if at all.
• Approved international election observers include sympathetic delegations from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the African Union, Russia, Sudan, Libya and Iran; shut out are observer teams from the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States.

ADMINISTRATIVE PREPAREDNESS

The Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) lacks independence since key personnel are appointed and dismissed by the president. Only about one third of its positions are filled with permanent staff, many recruited from the security sector. Hence the registrar general (a party loyalist and land reform beneficiary who has held his position since 1980) has usurped key electoral management functions, including voter registration.

The ZEC is seriously under-prepared for elections at the end of March:

• The commission holds only about a quarter of the necessary budget and the country faces crippling shortages of fuel and banknotes.
• The ZEC has failed to conduct voter education, but also blocked a local non-governmental organisation from doing so.
• Teachers, who serve as polling officers, are on strike.

Given these logistical challenges, and the fact that many voters do not know the location of newly designated polling stations, confusion and breakdown are likely on election day. Citing the complexity of a four-ballot election and the ZEC's limited administrative capacity, officials have already let it be known that up to a week could pass before complete election results are announced.

PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDERS

Zimbabwean politics revolve around a polarised divide between an entrenched ruling party and an earnest, but often hapless, opposition movement:

• Despite the recent entry of new contenders into the political arena, the struggle over the presidency between incumbent Robert Mugabe (ZANU-PF) and Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC) remains at the axis of the election.
• A breakaway MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara has proven unable to win by-elections and, by failing to enter an electoral pact with MDC-Tsvangirai in January, is unlikely to do well in the March vote.
• The wild card is former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, a challenger from within ZANU-PF, whose leadership appeal and electoral strength are presently untested. He has a reputation as a technocrat with sound economic judgement.

Nevertheless, compared to Tsvangirai, Makoni lacks a popular touch, a political party and a mass electoral base. Moreover, as a ZANU-PF insider, his standing also suffers from association with the country's long and painful descent into poverty and authoritarianism. Few senior party figures or security force officers have openly followed Makoni's lead; indeed, Vice-President Joyce Mujuru - whose husband, former army leader Solomon Mujuru, is rumoured to back Makoni - has formally urged voters to support the incumbent.

INTIMIDATION DYNAMICS

In effect, the campaign began last March, when ZANU-PF launched systematic violence against the top leadership of the MDC, leading to the hospitalisation of Tsvangirai and other senior figures. By early 2008, the party's intimidation machine was in full swing on several fronts - within the ruling party, against the opposition and among the electorate:

• The commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, Constantine Chiwenga, has expressed loyalty to Mugabe and dismissed his opponents as "sell outs".
• Police chief Augustine Chihuri has warned that protesters would be shot if they stage Kenya-style violence during the elections.
• Leave has been cancelled for police officers and soldiers have been dispersed to their rural homes in an apparent effort to coerce the population to vote for the ruling party.

The MDC and Makoni group report that candidates and supporters have been arrested or beaten and campaign rallies disrupted in all eight provinces, as well as Harare and Bulawayo. Nevertheless, the opposition seems to have enjoyed unusually open access to rural Mashonaland.

CAMPAIGN 'ISSUES'

Although the election is in effect a referendum on Mugabe's record of personal rule, the parties are running on distinctive platforms:

• The MDC promotes a comprehensive manifesto detailing plans on a wide range of topics from truth and justice, currency devaluation to equitable land reform.
• ZANU-PF candidates continue to claim legitimacy from their party's chimurenga (liberation struggle) heritage and to brand opponents (now including Makoni) as "British" or "Western" stooges who intend to return land to whites.
• However, in an effort to beat back the Makoni challenge, even the MDC has picked up some of the same inflammatory language, thus further dividing the opposition.

In a last-minute bid for support, ZANU-PF has resorted to what amounts to outright vote-buying:

• The government this month granted salary increases to the security forces in February and to the civil service.
• The party distributed cars to war veterans and computers to schools. On land resettlement schemes, the party has distributed farm machinery, generators, grinding mills and cattle.
• If they show a party card, some urban residents receive plots of land and rural dwellers get maize meal, sugar and cooking oil.

On March 7, Mugabe signed the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill into law. The measure requires all foreign-owned businesses to yield a 51% stake to "indigenous Zimbabweans", although the timing and scale of these transfers has yet to be established. The law fits into the president's efforts to maintain ZANU-PF as a liberation/populist party, but in contrast to the land reforms - in which many directly benefited, particularly in rural areas - those set to gain from the indigenisation legislation are the same business elite, which already comprise the ruling party's urban core.

ASSESSMENT

Voters may not be persuaded by these blandishments. To date, the election has generated little popular excitement; voters are preoccupied with daily economic survival and the prospect of yet another rigged election induces political despair. While Mugabe's rallies assemble older rural voters and schoolchildren, Tsvangirai has attracted sizeable crowds, even in Mutambara's supposed stronghold of Bulawayo.

Over time, national public opinion polls have show a steady decline in the proportion of ZANU-PF partisans (to about one fifth of eligible electorate) compared to a steady level of support for MDC-Tsvangirai (at about one third). However, another one third of voters steadfastly resist revealing their party preferences, making prediction of election outcomes impossible.

CONCLUSION

Mugabe and ZANU-PF retain the most effective election machine in the country, despite the challenge from Makoni. With little doubt in the presidential race, a key outcome will be the make-up of the incoming legislature, which will have new powers over the presidential succession, under envisaged constitutional reforms.