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| author/source:Star (SA) |
| published:Tue 9-Feb-2010 |
| posted on this site:Tue 9-Feb-2010 |
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| Article Type : News |
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| Simpson Mtambenengwe replaces Judge George Chiweshe, who presided over several farcical elections in recent years |
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Peta Thornycroft
Harare - Among the fractious paralysis of Zimbabwe's unity government - with increased arrests of Movement for Democratic Change supporters, continued selective prosecutions, and attempts by Zanu PF to strip Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of the few powers he has - there has been a glimmer of good news. The chairmen of the key human rights and electoral commissions have been announced, and both appointees have good local and international records. Professor Reg Austin will head the first Human Rights Commission. He was the late Joshua Nkomo's legal adviser during the Lancaster House talks in London in 1979, which led to independence six months later. Austin was also the first post-independence dean of law at the University of Zimbabwe and is one of the most experienced electoral officials within UN circles, having worked in many of the world's most difficult polls.
The Electoral Commission chairman is Judge Simpson Mtambenengwe, who went to the Namibian Bench in 1994, became acting chief justice and was chairman of the electoral commission in Windhoek. He replaces President Robert Mugabe's close confidant, Judge George Chiweshe, who presided over several farcical elections in recent years - including in 2008, when he delayed the results of the presidential poll for five weeks. During that period there was substantial information that some ballot boxes were removed from constituency offices in rural central Zimbabwe and taken to Harare, where at least one senior officer at police headquarters said police cadets were locked up in a room with the boxes over the weekends, and where he suspects ballots were tampered with.
Tsvangirai, who easily beat Mugabe in the first round of the poll, narrowly missed getting 50 percent plus one vote to be declared the outright winner. Several teachers hired to count votes were killed and imprisoned as it became clear that Mugabe and Zanu PF had been defeated. The teachers were seen as pro-MDC, and Chiweshe did nothing to prevent the persecution of teachers after results of parliamentary elections were announced, which stripped Zanu PF of the parliamentary majority it had held since independence. After this, Mugabe and Zanu PF launched a wave of violence against MDC supporters. Tsvangirai pulled out of the run-off in June 2008, citing intolerable political violence. Mugabe was then the sole candidate in the run-off in June 2008, declared himself victor, and was sworn in by a defrocked Anglican bishop, Norbert Kunonga, to serve another five years.
Former president Thabo Mbeki then moved in with negotiations. The Global Political Agreement, which gave birth to the unity government, was signed in September 2008 but, in reality, gave the election's victors, the MDC, minority power. President Jacob Zuma's three-person mediation team was due in Harare today to try to unblock the paralysis of the unity government as a civil service strike begins. Zanu PF says it will not fulfil outstanding issues of the political agreement until US and EU sanctions are lifted. The sanctions are all directed against Mugabe and his cronies, and do not stop the country as a whole trading with the US and EU.
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