MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday said he will take his electoral challenge to Sadc, despite the regional bloc’s election observer mission endorsing the July 31 polls.
Staff Reporters
Responding to questions from journalists outside Chikurubi Prison in Harare, where he had gone to visit detained MDC-T members, including the party’s deputy national chairman Morgan Komichi, Tsvangirai dismissed the Sadc Election Observer Mission final report as sounding more like a “Zanu PF narrative”.
“I have been advised of the so-called final report,” he said. “The so-called report is an endorsement of the previous report.
“What I fail to read in the report is that first and foremost the Maputo (Sadc) summit was very clear that certain conditions and reforms have to be implemented before a free and fair election can be conducted.
“Secondly, Sadc has got guidelines (but) they don’t even make reports as to whether the election passed the test with regards to those guidelines.
“I am actually disappointed that certain narratives coming out of the report indicate that they are Zanu PF narratives. How does a report of observers talk about sanctions, that parties were campaigning for sanctions and that is why they lost?
“Talk about pirate radio stations — I think there is nothing new. This is a mere endorsement of what they had already endorsed, so there is nothing surprising.” The Sadc observer team’s chief of mission, Bernard Membe, from Tanzania, described the elections as “free, peaceful and generally credible” punching holes into the MDC-T case that the elections were “rigged”.
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“We will be visiting the chairperson of Sadc (Malawian President Joyce Banda), the chairperson of the Troika (Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba) and the facilitator (Jacob Zuma) just to say ‘perhaps you arrived at this conclusion erroneously’, whether they won’t review (the matter), that is neither here nor there, but what I want to do is to engage Sadc because we can’t avoid Sadc,” he said. “We want to engage Sadc on the facts on the ground — whether that will have any effect, that is another matter.”
However, speaking at a breakfast meeting in South Africa, Zuma said the MDC-T had withdrawn its court application, making it difficult for Sadc not to recognise President Robert Mugabe’s election.
Zuma told journalists that it was expected for the MDC-T to be unhappy, as they had lost.
Zuma conceded that while there had been issues surrounding the timing of the election, the polls were generally free and credible.
