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Southern Africa: SADC Observers Big Let Down
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Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)
EDITORIAL
4 April 2008
Posted to the web 7 April 2008
Gaborone
The dust has finally settled on Botswana's political landscape and we believe now everything will go back to normal after a breath taking week in which the fourth President of the Republic was inaugurated, a new Vice President was appointed, the cabinet reshuffled and civil service rearranged.
Perhaps, as we go about our business, we should spare a thought for our neighbours in Zimbabwe. As we go to press Zimbaweans do not yet know the full results, after voting in a historic election last Saturday. Although parliamentary results are out, the nation and the world are on tenterhooks waiting for the presidential elections results. This is unacceptable.
What, however, is astonishing is that election observers such as Southern African Development Community observers have declared this election as free and fair even before the process could be completed.
With many observers from credible institutions and major international media organisations barred from observing and reporting on the Zimbabwean elections, SADC observers were among the few credible teams left to monitor these elections. The world placed a high premium on their verdict.
About five days after the elections we do not have the results yet SADC observers have already pronounced the elections to have been free and fair. Where are the results?
The 14-nation SADC, as a political institution, has disappointed the Zimbabwean people at a time when they suffered from state oppression, looting of farms, selective imprisonment of opposition members, beating and harassment of the opposition leaders, a general meltdown of the economy and social order. Millions of Zimbabweans have fled their motherland as a consequence.
Now when the Zimbabwean people want to take matters in their own hands, SADC observers could not be patient to endorse this sham of an election even before the process is complete. One wonders whether SADC observers were briefed on what an election process is - where it starts and where it ends.
Why are SADC observers squandering the little goodwill that the organisation has? We had completely lost hope in the SADC leaders' capacity to ever talk sense into Robert Mugabe and hoped that the observers would be different.
What the SADC observers have done is a complete dereliction of duty.We however trust that whatever happens in Zimbabwe sanity will prevail.
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If Mugabe loses the election he should at least have the decency to read the writing on the wall than to subject the innocent people to more hardship and bloodshed.
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