Arthur Mutambara (MDC-M), Robert Mugabe (Zanu PF), Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) compared to Nick Clegg (Lib Dem), Gordon Brown (Labour) and David Cameron (Conservatives).
After the harmonised electoral fiasco that ensued the 29 March 2008 in former British colony Zimbabwe, world political focus has been redirected at the just ended UK elections that returned a hung parliament that has thrown the UK in the electoral quandary its former colony down south found itself in 2008.
Despite some profound variations in the political power matrixes in the two countries, there are numerous similarities that are playing out in the pre and post UK election to the events that unfolded in Zimbabwe pre and post the March 2008 elections.
The UK is a monarch with the Queen as its hereditary and uncontested Head of State presiding over a Monarch appointed Premier as its heading a Parliamentary democracy government.
Meanwhile its former colony Zimbabwe was a dejure parliamentary democracy with an Executive President as its elected and contestable Head of State and Government.
The importance of this variance in political systems is critical to understand when attempting to compare and contrast fundamental similarities and or differences emerging from the latest UK pre and post election experience s to those in its former colony in March 2008.
Because the UK Head of State position is not contestable the political preference and activism, if any, of the incumbent is not as directly and manifestly evident on the political terrain as is the case in Zimbabwe where the Head of State is directly elected by the electorate.
Further, because the Head of State in the UK is not actively involved in the leadership of government business and that position is not directly affected by who is in government as it owes its existence to inheritance than electoral processes, the incumbent is unlikely to side with a particular political formation aspiring to govern the country.
In contrast though in Zimbabwe where the Head of State is a product of electoral processes and in most cases a nominated representative of a political formation the sectarian party political interests that sponsor his/her ascendancy to power have control over his actions as the Head of State and may be prejudicial to political opponents from other political persuasions.
The same political constraints and influences that instruct and model the Zimbabwe President’s behaviours as Head of State apply to the British Premier who is also a product of political nomination. The difference between the powers of Zimbabwe President as Head of State and Government to those of the UK Premier as Head of Government is that the Zimbabwe President as head of Government is accountable to himself as the President and the electorate and his/her political formation while the UK Premier is accountable to the Monarch, the electorate and his/her sponsoring political formation.
The Zimbabwe President is the ultimate custodian of the country’s Constitution and can only be sanctioned by Parliament which he in most instance has control over from political Party structures and is unlikely to go against its own offering for the presidency while in the UK the monarch is the ultimate custodian of the Constitution and the Premier assumes power at the pleasure of the Monarch of the day.
That is the reason why up to now the UK Head of State-The Queen- remains out of the radar of the electoral political developments in the country while the Premier is deeply in focus.
At the centre of the March 2008 Zimbabwe electoral quandary were President Robert Mugabe (Zanu PF) and Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) in respect of the Presidency and Arthur Mutambara (MDC-M), Robert Mugabe (Zanu PF) and Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) with regard to Parliamentary control and the right to form the government after the election.
In the UK the key players vying for control of Parliament and the right to form the post election government are Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats) Prime Minister Gordon Brown (Labour) and David Cameron (Conservatives).
Coming into the elections both UK Premier Gordon Brown and Zimbabwe President were riding a wave of unpopular electorate discontent for different reasons.
In the case of the Zimbabwe President it was because of economic mismanagement over three decades in uninterrupted power, brutal political intolerance, haphazard land expropriation, unbridled corruption and appalling human rights abuses through selective application of laws.
Gordon Brown was unpopular with UK voters from the day he took over the Premiership from the charismatic Tony Blair and then the country was plunged into a debilitating global recession which ironically helped to shore up his political fortunes as he took decisive action to rescue the economy from total collapse.
The brutally violent, intolerant, stringent media controls by the stupendous ruling party in pre election Zimbabwe cannot in any way be compared in any way to the tranquility that characterized the UK’s electioneering other than the disclosure of the MP’s expenses scandal that rocked all the major political parties and alienated them with voters.
Even then that scandal was nowhere near the scandal that involving Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono’s generosity towards the Zanu PF campaign through quasi-fiscal interventions that bankrupted the country.
In Zimbabwe results of the March harmonised elections took 35 days to be announced compared with the 12 hours it took for the UK results to be announced.
The disputed Zimbabwe March 29, 2008 results for the Presidential segment of the harmonised elections were 47.9%:43.2% and 8% for Tsvangirai (MDC-T), Mugabe (Zanu PF) and Makoni (MKD) respectively.
The initial results were later to be reversed to 85.5% and 9.3% for Mugabe and Tsvangirai respectively by a Presidential runoff election on 27 June 2008 that Mugabe ended being the sole candidate after ordering his supporters to physically batter top contender Morgan Tsvangirai into withdrawing.
The equally contentious 210 chamber Parliamentary segment of the election’s results were 100: 99: 10:1 seats in favour of MDC-T, Zanu PF, MDC-M and Independent while in the 60 contestable chamber Senate the results were 30:24:6 in favour of Zanu PF, MDC-T and MDC-M respectively.
In the just ended UK elections there were no Presidential elections but the 650 chamber Legislative Assembly commonly referred to as the Commons whose majority party automatically secures the right to nominate the Prime Minister and form the government the results were 305:258:57:8:6:5:3:3:1:1:1in favour of Conservatives: Labour: Liberal Democrats: Democratic Unionist Party: Scottish National Party : Sinn Féin ( Abstentionist): Plaid Cymru: Social Democratic and Labour Party: Green Party of England and Wales : Sylvia Hermon (Independent): Alliance Party of Northern Ireland : Vacant.
In both the Zimbabwe and UK elections voters were turned away as the election officers failed to process the large turnout of last minute voters.
Similarly in both elections the winning parties failed to secure an absolute Parliamentary majority by 6 seats in the case of the Zimbabwe MDC-T and 21 for the UK Conservatives.
The results in both cases put the contesting parties in a quandary.
In Zimbabwe the quandary was deepened by the fact that announcement of results of the Presidential election that required a candidate to win 50% plus 1 additional vote to be declared outright winner were deliberately withheld by the Electoral Commission.
That created a political vacuum as the new President had the constitutional responsibility to invite the Party with the Parliamentary majority to attempt to form the next government.
Caretaker President Robert Mugabe Zanu PF who was staring defeat at the hands of Morgan Tsvangirai and obviously angry at that would not allow the results showing his outright defeat to be announced until he had worked out what percentages to fiddle around with to deny his opponent the outright victory.
There is evidence that figures that were posted outside polling stations were at variance with those ultimately announced by the National Elections Commission and the variances were never explained to the electorate.
The Zimbabwe Presidential gerrymandering with the election processes was further complicated by court applications demanding the release of the Presidential results and arbitrary amendment of the Electoral Act through publication of Regulations to justify the delayed announcement and the deferment of the Presidential runoff election beyond the 21 days after the holding of the initial election that Parliament had legislated.
The argument that Zimbabwe elections had returned a hung Parliament because neither of the contesting parties had managed to attain the 106 seat threshold to claim absolute majority in Parliament was thrown in to create confusion.
The Zimbabwe electoral laws do not prescribe that as a requirement before any party winning the election can be invited to form a government but simply decrees that the party with the highest number of parliamentary seats must invited by the President to form the post election government.
In any event the seats that were contested for had been reduced to 204 as elections in 6 constituencies had been postponed due to a variety of reasons that were justified in terms of the Electoral laws.
In respect of the Presidential contest the Zimbabwe UK Parliamentary election requires a winner to achieve at least 50% plus 1 of either the votes or seats being contested.
Be that as it may the political paralysis that resulted after the Zimbabwe elections is identical to that the UK is currently grappling with in that in both cases the argument was that none of the aspirants had managed an absolute mandate to form a government.
In the UK the winning Conservatives fell short by 21 seats to secure the right to nominate the Prime Minister from within their ranks to present to the Queen for appointment and authorization to form the post election government.
In Zimbabwe the winning MDC-T party equally fell short of the absolute majority by 6 seats to enjoy an absolute Parliamentary majority.
The difference though is the permutations that could enable the two leading parties to form a coalition government through seeking coalition alliances with the minor parties.
In Zimbabwe both MDC-T and Zanu PF could forge alliances with the minor MDC-M and form a majority government while in the UK only the Conservatives has the numbers that will allow it to form a majority government in coalition with the third placed Liberal Democrats while second placed Labour will need to scrounge around for additional alliances with the minor or regional parties to achieve a majority coalition government.
On that realisation Nick Clegg the Liberal Democrats leader took the initiative handed his party by the failure of either of the two parties (Conservatives and Labour) ahead of his to secure the majority of parliamentary seats to exert his party’s casting influence to bring finality to the inconclusive electoral process.
After declaring that in his opinion the party that secured the most votes had the first moral right to attempt to form the government he had literally signaled Conservatives leader David Cameron to get in touch with him with offers in return for Liberal Democrats joining him in attempts to form a coalition government.
In Zimbabwe MDC-M leader Arthur Mutambara whose party had secured the 5% casting vote as opposed to Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems 9% made similar overtures by announcing that his party would support the MDC-T candidate in the Presidential runoff election.
Realising the effect that alliance had on his success chances in the runoff Zanu PF’s sponsored caretaker President Mugabe countered by rolling out a vicious campaign of murder, torture, rape, intimidation, displacement, repossession of identity cards, refusal of media space and disruption of his opponent’s campaign rallies to haunt him out of the race-
In the UK when Nick Clegg made his announcement the caretaker Prime Minister and defeated Labour Party leader by contrast announced to the nation that he would do everything in his power to ensure the country achieved a strong and stable government following the post electoral quagmire it had been thrown into and that included him providing full Civil Service support to the Conservatives and liberal democrats exploratory talks to form a coalition to their finality.
Not only did Gordon Brown live by his word and availed the Cabinet office for use by the two parties to negotiate a coalition pact that would end his tenure at No 10 Downing Street as premier but he also availed both leaders with Official chauffer driven escort cars and security while they plotted his party’s downfall.
After 3 days of uninterrupted negotiations between Nick Clegg and David Cameron the UK caretaker Premier announced that Nick Clegg had requested that his party be allowed to embark on parallel talks aimed at forming a coalition with the Labour Party and he would facilitate the holding of those talks as well.
Over the week end the caretaker UK Premier appeared at the Victory of Europe (VE) day commemorations with the two leaders plotting his demise and simultaneously laid commemoration wreaths with them in a public show of the prevailing political environment in the country where there is no legitimized premier following the inconclusive election.
In similar circumstances Morgan Tsvangirai was in hiding in South Africa and Botswana without a passport fearing for his life for having defeated Mugabe at the polls and then accepted to run against him in a proposed Presidential runoff election.
After conducting an internationally discredited runoff Presidential runoff in which he ended up the only contestant and ultimately declared himself winner with 85.5% of the vote President Mugabe flew out of the country to attend an AU Heads of State summit in Sharm El Sheik leaving the country in limbo and his supporters dishing unrestrained violence to suspected and real opponents from the MDC-T.
When he was not well received at the summit he returned to the country and announced his willingness to submit to a SADC mediated process aimed at forming a coalition government with the two MDC parties.
President Mugabe who at every opportunity does not hesitate to brag his unrivaled position as the vanguard of the country’s sovereignty opened the floodgates for foreign intervention in the country’s internal affairs to legitimize his stolen Presidency.
The Zanu PF leadership has wasted no time in pointing out the perceived hypocrisy of the international community towards the UK electoral crisis yet they were vociferous in condemning the party in the Zimbabwe electoral crisis of 2008.
What they do not realise is that pre and post election UK has not recorded a single act of interparty political violence while in Zimbabwe no less than 500 political activists were killed thousands others tortured and vandalized and half a million displaced from their homes for supporting parties other than Zanu PF.
It is not the electoral malaise that drew international attention to Zimbabwe but the blatant violation of human rights by the State that attracted international intervention in Zimbabwe that is absent in the UK in similar electoral problems.
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