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Hildegarde The Arena

November 8 is around the corner! The global community is waiting with bated breadth to see the man and/or woman who will be the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.As President Barack Obama starts his valedictories, presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald Trump are on their last lap trying to woo voters, amid a backdrop of bizarre accusations and counter-accusations.

Some people can’t be bothered about who occupies the White House after Obama, because the US presidency is a straitjacket position, run by the Military Industrial Complex.

However, Trump’s drumbeat about a rigged election — rigged by corrupt people — is getting louder by the day, as he also claims that the US electoral system is heavily biased against him, working in cahoots with the media.

We cannot ignore his claims, and buy the notion that he is an eccentric character who will say anything and everything in order to attract attention.

Some people think that as the election date draws closer, Trump might be having panic attacks, but according to media reports, “Trump has raised the possibility for weeks of illegal activities that could tarnish the November election result.”

This piece in not in support of a Trump presidency because one of the two candidates will end up in the White House, but it won’t stop the sun from rising or setting in Zimbabwe.

Donald Trump

The US policy on Zimbabwe under Zanu-PF and President Mugabe is well known.

Hillary Clinton’s policy position on Zimbabwe during her tenure as Secretary of State is in the public domain for all to see.

Her foreign policy on Africa can be summarised thus: a warmonger, who came to Africa and saw, but the end result was the butchering of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi by rebels, with nato’s assistance.

It is the accusation about a stolen election being made before the election is held that makes interesting reading, for it makes us question the integrity of the US electoral system.

Trump has claimed that even the dead are voting in US elections: “People who died 10 years ago are still voting,” Trump claimed.

At one point, he maintained: “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!” What does this point to: a rejection of results if he loses to Clinton!

Trump is not the first US candidate to cry out that he is being robbed in broad daylight. Another presidential contender who was running against Hillary Clinton — Bernie Sanders, and his supporters also made vote rigging allegations, before conceding defeat to Clinton.

Hillary Clinton

And, President Obama should not tell Trump to “stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes,” because as observers, we know that in 2000 George W. Bush stole the election from Al Gore.

When a precedent has been set in an election where there are no international observers, why should we believe that it cannot repeat itself?

Notwithstanding, the United States would want us to look the other way, when they willy-nilly accuse Zanu-PF of rigging elections, without substantiating their claims, just like they are accusing Trump of doing.

A case in point is the report presented to the Bureau of African Affairs Sub-Committee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organisations on September 12, 2013 by Deputy Assistant Secretary Dr Shannon Smith, after Zimbabwe held the July 31 harmonised elections.

She presented a damning report on the Zimbabwean elections claiming that they were “seriously flawed”.

Shannon claimed, “The recent elections were a particularly acute disappointment . . . as the electoral process was systematically manipulated. There were serious irregularities in the provision and composition of the voters roll; political parties had unequal access to state media; and the security sector did not safeguard the electoral process equitably.”

She went on to say that: “Elections are a process, not a single day event, and that process was too flawed to be credible. While we are all grateful that polling was not marked by violence this year, the absence of overt violence is not sufficient for the outcome to be considered legitimate.”

Similar sentiments have been expressed about other developing countries where the US and its allies are the first to present adverse reports, reports that are written before the election has been held. To them, the bottom-line is that we are banana republics that need to be policed, and that do not understand the fundamentals of democracy.

Now that Donald Trump continues to make these allegations on an election that is fraught with other challenges, are we supposed to keep quiet, and allow the double standards to continue with impunity?

Apart from the rigging issues, the sleazy information we hear on a daily basis would have disqualified both candidates, but since it is the United States, that’s not possible, and other countries should not interfere in their internal affairs.

True, they should not, but this election is teaching the world’s policeman that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

The desperation to have Clinton elected the United States’ first woman president is such that it has erased a whole country’s institutional memory to an extent that the women voters who find Trump’s sex life disdainful, forget that Bill Clinton was in 1992 accused of doing similar things — abusing women.

But, they voted for him, and Hillary Clinton — one of his many women victims also went on to become First Lady. Where is the difference in the womanising, or maybe where do they draw the line when both men have used their undue power and influence to take advantage of women?

The grand finale could be a challenged result by Trump, despite an assurance from his running mate Mike Pence, that they will respect the outcome of the election.

Will Clinton accept a Trump win, because it’s not over until it’s over?