People’s Rainbow Coalition (PRC) principals last week led a high-powered delegation to meet the Southern Africa Development Community Election Advisory Committee (SEAC). According to PRC information department, the meeting was part of the regional body’s assessment tools to measure Zimbabwe’s preparedness for the 2018 elections and the PRC was able to use the opportunity to apprise SEAC on issues impinging on having free, fair, credible and transparent elections.
BY SILAS NKALA
The PRC presidential candidate, Joice Mujuru, People’s Democratic Party president, Lucia Matibenga, National People’s Party deputy president, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, Zunde president, Farai Mbira led the briefing, while the PRC secretary-general, Gorden Moyo, gave an account of the grouping’s concerns.
“The PRC team advised SEAC that it was not possible to hold credible, free, fair and transparent elections in Zimbabwe under current conditions where the military (3 000 soldiers) have gone back to the barracks after the November 2017 coup, removed their uniforms and redeployed into the community, harassing and intimidating the electorate and coercing them to vote for [President Emmerson] Mnangagwa and Zanu PF in the forthcoming elections,” a PRC said in a statement.
“Since the coup, there has been a noticeable and deliberate redeployment of military personnel from the back office to the front office of operations both in the Zanu PF and in government, as well as in important institutions of government such as the (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission] Zec.”
PRC reportedly highlighted that its preferred position on the impeding elections would be for the government to seek Sadc’s help in running elections that, among other things, allow opposition to equal access to the media and unrestricted access to the electorate.
“The following issues were also highlighted; Partisan traditional leadership – while the PRC respects traditional authority, it was disturbed by utterances from some traditional leaders openly declaring their support for Zanu PF.”
