Harare | Wednesday
ZIMBABWE’S government plans to ban foreign and independent local monitors from observing upcoming presidential elections, the state-run Herald newspaper said on Wednesday.
On the recommendation of Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, government plans to amend Zimbabwe’s Electoral Act to allow only civil servants to monitor the polls, the paper said.
Last year, non-government organisations trained 24 000 monitors to observe parliamentary elections which were marred by widespread violence and intimidation during the campaign period.
At least 34 people were killed before the polls.
Chinamasa said in his recommendation that monitors trained by NGOs were not impartial because they received funding from overseas.
“The situation has been discovered to be undesirable, considering the fact that most non-governmental organisations are partial, foreign-funded, loyal to their funders, and therefore produce monitors who were partisan,” Chinamasa said.
Chinamasa plans to propose the new measure when parliament resumes sitting on November 20.
The government has already refused to allow observers from the European Union and the United States to observe the polls.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civic groups have insisted that international observers be allowed to monitor the elections, which they fear will suffer from the same political violence that marred the general elections.
The MDC does not hold enough seats in parliament to block the amendment to the Electoral Act.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai is expected to pose the most serious challenge ever to President Robert Mugabe in the elections, expected by April 2002. In other developments, Zimbabwe’s former chief justice, who was forced by Harare to retire in March, has attacked President Robert Mugabe for undermining human rights and the rule of law and condemned his disrespect for the judiciary, London newspapers reported this week.
In the annual John Foster Human Rights Trust lecture delivered in London late on Monday, Anthony Gubbay said Mugabe had shown a “blatant and contemptuous disrespect” for the judiciary over his treatment, according to The Times.
Gubbay was forced by Harare to retire in March after he opposed verdicts favouring forcible seizures of white-owned land for redistribution to marginalized blacks.
His speech on Monday marked the first time he had spoken in public since he was forced to step down, The Times and Daily Telegraphreported.
“Judges should not be made to feel apprehensive of their personal safety. They should not be subjected to government intimidation in the hope that they would become more compliant and rule in favour of the executive,” he said.
Gubbay added that such “unjustifiable and unreasonable attacks (on the judiciary) … damaged it as an institution”.
He said he was saddened not to be allowed to serve until April 2002, when he had been due to retire, the papers reported.
The Telegraph quoted Gubbay as saying Mugabe had set out to undermine human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe ever since he came to power more than 20 years ago.
“With hindsight I do not believe this can be dismissed as the teething troubles of a new government flexing its muscles after an inordinate period of white minority rule.”
The Times said some 300 of Britain’s most senior judges, including the Chief Justice, gathered to hear Gubbay. – AFP
ZA*NOW:
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FEATURES:
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