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A mock exercise by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission on the use of the Biometric Voter Registration

Trevor Shiri Correspondent
The debate around the introduction and implementation of Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) continues to rage on, as Zimbabwe trudges towards the 2018 harmonised elections.

ZEC conducted field tests of the two short-listed companies, Germany-based Dermalog Identification Systems and Chinese-based Laxton Group Limited, who bid to supply the BVR kits which will be used by the electoral body during the BVR exercise to come up with a biometric voters’ roll.

ZEC is yet to announce, which of the two bidding companies secured the green light to supply the BVR kits.

This has caused undue consternation among opposition politicians, who due to their lack of wisdom want to stampede ZEC to announce the winner, forgetting that tendering is a process.

MDC-T Spokesperson, Obert Gutu, tweeted that “there’s justifiable anxiety regarding when ZEC will announce the winner of the tender to supply BVR kits. Time is fast running out.”

What is lost on Gutu is that time was never there in the first place, especially with ZEC being stampeded to implement BVR for the first time without even piloting it.

The scarcity of time has been compounded by an opposition that has been wilfully raising spurious non-issues such as why did Government take over the purchase of BVR kits from a foreign body, the UNDP? Which company has been short-listed and why? And of late, who will supply the servers?

All these silly delaying tactics on the purchase of hardware only serves to further eat up unavailable time. What is the objective of the opposition in doing all this? Dear reader, that answer will be made more clearer latter.

A bit of immediate history would suffice.

The Herald, in its wisdom, rightly spotlighted the various problems associated with the rushed implementation of BVR a few weeks back, with the opposition and the private media criticising it for attempting to sow confusion in an alleged bid to scuttle BVR implementation.

As noted then, the paper called for caution with regards the danger of hacking of the biometric voters roll; the pitfalls of implementing BVR without piloting it; the telecommunications and power infrastructure challenges; limited time to procure the BVR equipment, kits and servers; inadequate time to train the users of the equipment, among other realistic concerns and issues.

Fast forward a few weeks later, in a rare Damascene moment, a local daily in a story titled “ZEC likely to revert to discredited voters’ roll” acknowledged the pitfalls which The Herald cited, particularly the time constraint between now and the 2018 harmonised elections.

“That paper wrote that ZEC is likely to use the 2013 voters’ roll in 2018 “as the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) process will not be completed in time, analysts claim.

“They argued that the BVR system requires careful planning, preparation and implementation, making the whole process time consuming.”

Reading the foregoing, there was a feeling of de javu. Suddenly, just because an electoral expert has said it, it means something, yet The Herald warned about the time factor, querying why opposition parties were stampeding ZEC to implement BVR, yet it was clear that time was not on the country’s side.

The daily quoted an electoral expert, Vivid Gwede, saying “there has been significant delays already in terms of bringing in the BVR process, especially considering that it is a new thing that people must amply familiarise themselves with. It is not certain that the current timelines, as delayed as they are, will even be met . . . that alone has a risk of plunging the forthcoming election into rather a foreseeable dispute.”

The observations by Gwede are instructive, especially when read in sync with comments by People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader, Tendai Biti, that opposition parties under the ambit of the envisaged coalition would still lose to Zanu-PF in 2018. Biti, writing in The Gravitas, an online publication, said that “the one self-evident conclusion is that in the short term, Zanu-PF cannot be dislodged. That its control of the patronage economy and the social base is absolute. That despite its fractures, the opposition, even in a grand coalition, cannot dislodge Zanu-PF.”

The opposition is well aware of its structural and ideological deficiencies, which has rendered it incapable of mastering a decent social base capable of catapulting it to power.

The misguided push to stampede the country to adopt BVR, even though it is crystal clear that it is next to impossible to do so given the Constitutional timeframe to hold elections in 2018, is a pointer to some sinister plot by the opposition.

Throw into the mix the delusional declaration by MDC-T leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, that he would not accept any other result in 2018, other than the one in which he is the victor, even if he has perennially garnered an average of one million, and the sinister plot begins to unravel.

What is absolute, according to historical statistics and Biti’s prognosis, is that the opposition is well aware of its pending defeat, hence, may be creating fertile ground to dispute the legitimacy of the 2018 election by stampeding the country to adopt BVR, despite the limited implementation time.

As rightly pointed out by Gwede, the ill-advised and rushed push and fixation on the BVR by the opposition, through the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA), would plunge the country into “foreseeable dispute.”

The deliberate and calculated push, is just, but be a red herring, aimed at distracting the populace to the evil machinations of the opposition, which knows its fate in 2018, but is looking to create an outlet to justify its inevitable absolute loss.

The picture begins to become more clearer, if one looks at the cooked up claims of fictitious abductions, beatings and alleged human rights excesses, which are all aimed at portraying that the electoral environment is already poisoned for the holding of a free and fair election.

The angry reaction wrought by the latest Afrobarometer findings that 64 percent of Zimbabweans trust President Mugabe’s leadership is indicative of an opposition aware of its fate in 2018.

The rushed implementation of the BVR, despite the existence of the odds heavily stacked against its successful implementation given the short time-span available when elections are Constitutionally due, is just, but a brewing pot of a disputed electoral result!