SW Radio Africa news - The Independent Voice of Zimbabwe
Over 50 foreign observer missions have been invited to monitor Zimbabwe’s July 31st elections, including known ZANU PF allies and friends who endorsed the flawed run-off election in 2008.
The Foreign Affairs ministry, headed by ZANU PF’s Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, has selected which foreign observer teams are welcome in Zimbabwe during the coming polls. According to a list of from the Ministry, those invited include regional and sub-regional groups like COMESA, SADC and the African Union (AU).
Individual countries from the SADC region and other African countries have also been invited, including Algeria, Kenya and Uganda. South Africa will also be monitoring, sending 120 observers as part of the SADC mission.
From Asia, the countries invited include China, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Malaysia, while from the Americas, invitations have gone out to Brazil, Jamaica, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Britain, the European Union (EU) and the United States are among the countries excluded, as was the case during the 2008 elections. From Europe, some individual countries have been invited, and those are Russia, Belarus and Serbia.
Mumbengegwi has previously insisted that any country that still maintains targeted, restrictive ‘sanctions’ against the Mugabe regime will not be allowed to monitor the vote.
The ZANU PF minister has also extended an invite to the USA based ‘December 12 Movement’, an African-American organisation that openly endorsed the 2008 run-off poll as an “expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe.” This was despite the sham poll having a single candidate, Mugabe, and the serious violence that preceded that vote which saw Morgan Tsvangirai withdraw from the contest.
Few countries moved to isolate Mugabe as an illegitimate President, and even SADC attempted to gloss over the illegality of the process by drafting a unity deal between ZANU PF and the MDC.
The invited observer missions still need to receive accreditation from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
According to civil society groups ZEC is heavily influenced by ZANU PF and this could likely cause a problem when accrediting groups.
Thabani Nyoni, the spokesperson for the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, said the process of inviting observers is all about control, with ZANU PF wanting to “screen and influence ZEC’s decision on who observes and who doesn’t.”
“It’s not a birthday party where you invite your friends; it is a process where you bring in all those so you have a proper assessment of your processes. But you must realise there is an attempt to manage perceptions by courting favours and cherry picking,” Nyoni said.
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