Cape Town — As Zimbabweans queued in long lines to vote on Saturday, an experienced African election monitor warned that they went to the polls with many "question marks" hanging over whether the elections could be free and fair.
Denis Kadima, executive director of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA), told AllAfrica in an interview from Harare that there was a positive side to the elections.
"People can campaign wherever they want," he said, "and it does not seem like there is any attempt to harass people.... at least in Harare and in... the regions where we have deployed. Even the opposition parties and candidates recognize that there is a great improvement."
But, he added, "It's not easy to come to a conclusion. People can come [to Zimbabwe] and see the peacefulness and get briefings from... parties and see long queues and they will be satisfied and say it was free and fair. But it may be a superficial assessment. There are many grey areas in these elections."
He also voiced concern that election observers - largely comprising delegations from intergovernmental bodies invited by the Zimbabwean government - "are sometimes not asking the right questions."
EISA, an NGO operating under the patronage of the former Botswana president, Sir Ketumile Masire, has observed more than 10 elections in southern and east Africa in the past five years, but was not invited to Zimbabwe and has not received official accreditation for its 25-strong observer mission.
Kadima said the voters' roll did not enjoy credibility in the eyes of many. There had been no adequate explanation of how the number of voters had risen from 5.6 million to 5.9 million between December and February.
"That's a big jump and people don't know how that happened... Many people that have been observing the process can't see how they could have had such a jump. Look, there may be an explanation, but people need to know where those people are, in which areas."
There was also no clarity on special votes cast by officials living outside Zimbabwe and by members of the security forces: "People would like to know ... how the votes of these his people are being accounted for and how transparent and fair [that process] is?"
Voter education had been inadequate, he added, and "there are claims that it was done in such a way that it can give advantage to the ruling party."
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He also cited the role of Zimbabwean government departments - and not the country's electoral commission - in aspects of the electoral process ranging from compiling the voters' roll to accrediting observers.
"The main challenge of these elections is... essentially about those hidden aspects of electoral forces which can only be observed if the process is transparent. But access to the voters' roll has not always been easy and many of the things took place before observers arrived," he said.
"To address those kinds of issues you need to have a transparent process. Only then will you be able to assess. What do you do when you are not able to answer such crucial questions? That will be the biggest dilemma for observers."
Kadima added that there were other "worrying signals" such Zimbabwe's police chief, Augustine Chihuri, suggesting that he would not recognize an opposition victory at the polls: "In the context of an election in a democratic society there is no way a police head who is supposed to be a public servant can take sides that way, and neither the government nor the electoral commission has condemned this statement."
