Ghana offers a remarkable precedent that Zimbabwe will surely not follow
Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court will almost certainly dismiss the MDC's application to it to annul the July 31 elections because of vote-rigging. But in Ghana the Supreme Court may just do the unthinkable in a similar case.
Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) doesn’t stand a real chance with its application to Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court to order a rerun of the July 31 presidential and parliamentary elections. President Robert Mugabe beat Tsvangirai by 61 to 34 percent in the presidential election and Zanu PF trounced MDC-T by 160 seats to 49 in the National Assembly vote.
Tsvangirai and MDC-T have alleged massive fraud by Zanu PF, mainly through a voters roll which was given to opposition parties too late for them to inspect properly but which is supposedly filled with suspect anomalies such as one million non-existent voters, 100 000 people over 100 years old, and so on.
This is after all the same Constitutional Court which ordered Mugabe to call the elections by July 31, based on an application by an obscure NGO. It was clearly a Zanu PF set up from the start. The court also rejected a request from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to reconsider its decision and allow at least a two week postponement.
That probably would have allowed the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission enough time to deliver the voters roll to all parties so they could examine it for flaws. In retrospect it now looks as though that is precisely what Zanu PF didn’t want to happen. And there was little chance of the court taking a different view since it is packed with Zanu PF judges, some of whom have been given farms taken from white farmers. The most that can be expected from MDC-T’s application to the court is that it might reveal the truth or otherwise of the many accusations of vote rigging which have been leveled against Zanu PF. Though how much it will be possible to expose in the two weeks the Constitutional Court has before making a ruling, is questionable.
These things take time, as the Ghana experience is showing. The country’s supreme court is about to issue its judgment on whether the results of last year’s presidential elections should be overturned, after a case that has dragged on for several months. By contrast with what is likely in Zimbabwe, though, this is a serious legal challenge to the victory of President John Damani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party over his main challenger Nana Akufo-Addo of the National Patriotic Party (NPP).
When the case - in which the NPP is asking the court to annul about 4,6 million votes cast for Mahama - opened few observers in Ghana or elsewhere took it seriously. They believed that overturning a president who had all the tools of incumbency on his side and the cost of running new elections would count against a verdict in favour of Akufo-Addo. But as the hearing has progressed, the chances of an upset for Mahama have evidently increased and the case now seems quite evenly balanced. Ghana’s judges have so far proved themselves to be professional and independent in their conduct of the case, at least ostensibly resistant to the huge political pressure which is being exerted on them to rule one either way.
The independent stance of the judges can no doubt be attributed in part to transparency; the case is being broadcast live on national television, radio and the internet, attracting a large public following. And so the judges’ reputations are on the line. So are those of the many witnesses from both parties and from the electoral commission who have given evidence. Political careers have been made or lost, Ghanains say. For example the chairman of the electoral commission, Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, previously regarded as highly capable, wilted under cross-examination, revealing himself to be ignorant of significant details of electoral rules.
No doubt warming to their new-found fame under the glare of the cameras, the judges have dished out a few minor jail sentences to journalists and others for contempt of court, (or 'scandalising the judiciary' as the offence is called there) is what has become something of a soap opera. Nevertheless the case is already surely unprecedented, in Africa, in the extent of transparency it has brought to judicial oversight of political elections. And it would be even more extraordinary and unprecedented if the court were to order the re-running of all or part of the election. Some Ghanains are anxious that such a ruling could destabilize the country, though if any African country could withstand such a shock it would be Ghana which has now gone through several democratic and peaceful changes in government.
But the Ghana precedent is unlikely to resonate in Zimbabwe either way. It’s hard to imagine the monopoly Zimbabwe Broadcasting Commission transmitting it live, for instance. And it is significant that unlike in Zimbabwe, the election result in Ghana was close; Mahama won just 50,7 percent of the vote, beating Akufo-Addo by only about 325 000 votes. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s margin of victory over Tsvangirai was over one million votes, if the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is to be believed.
And in Parliament Zanu PF’s margin of 111 seats over MDC-T was also huge. Those large margins have convinced many commentators to conclude that an inept performance by Tsvangirai and MDC-T played a large part in their defeat. Intuitively, that seems likely. But who knows how far one can manipulate a voters roll that noone has seen? One of the most significant statistics of the elections was that Tsvangirai won about the same number of votes as he had in the first round of the 2008 presidential elections – 1,1 million. Mugabe won just over one million and so Tsvangirai beat him 48 to 43 percent in 2008. On July 31, 2013, though, Mugabe increased his vote by about 1,2 million.
Did Zanu PF do a great job in bringing out the live vote? Or were Mugabe’s new supporters mostly zombies, the living dead?
Wouldn’t it be great if we could ever find out? Somehow I don’t think we ever will.
Peter Fabricius, Foreign Editor, Independent Newspapers, South Africa
