Lessons from the 29 March 2008 Elections

Here are our observations from the 29 March 2008 elections as communicated to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

Regards,

THE CDP TEAM

Our Ref: CDP004-08
23 July 2008
The Chief Election Officer
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
Century House East
HARARE

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: Opportunities for Refinement.

On 15 February 2008 we submitted nomination papers for both Presidential and Member of Parliament elections of 29 March 2008. As we navigated the processes leading to those elections, we noted various opportunities for improvement, which we list below for your consideration.

Public Relations

1.1 Please train your staff to avoid interrogating candidates seeking information. We went to your offices at 4th Floor Cecil House to enquire how much the nomination deposits were. The first thing they asked was “Where are you from?” Surely the nomination deposits are the same for all candidates, regardless of which party they are from! So we felt that question was totally unnecessary.
1.2 Please do not sell the voters rolls. It is our understanding that those voters’ rolls are produced using taxpayers’ money. So it is off-putting to then ask the same taxpayers for more money to access the voters’ rolls.


Venues
2.1 State of the Courts
The Court used for the Presidential nomination at Mashonganyika Building was not in a good state of repair. Among other things the paint on the walls was peeling badly. Attempts had clearly been made to conceal these with flags and table cloths but there weren’t enough to cover the whole room. That is likely to have de-campaigned the country because there were reporters in that room taking photographs that were beamed right across the world. We suggest that you select a court that is in a better state of repair in future.
2.2 Court Amenities. The parliamentary court at the Magistrates Court was held by gas light because there was no power. We felt sorry for the poor clerks who had to pore over the voters rolls in semi darkness. Surely a small generator could have been found for that day only.

Information Technology Opportunities
Recent advances in information technology provide incredible opportunities which were not exploited in full. More utilization of information technology could have saved the Commission money and candidate’s time. For example candidates from outlying areas had to travel to main centres just to collect nomination papers. If those papers had been on a website, candidates could have downloaded them from where they were and it would have saved the Commission printing costs as well.
Contrary to popular belief, websites are no longer expensive. In fact they could easily be set up for free. Also if the voters roll could be put on a web site, it could save the Commission printing costs and candidates would be able to verify their nominators on site, wherever they happen to be. In both nomination courts we saw massive mountains of printouts which were supposed to be voters’ rolls. These were not only expensive to produce but were also very cumbersome for the poor clerks who had to wade through them. If the voters’ rolls had been on an official website, it would have represented one version of the truth which would have helped everybody. As it is we have reason to believe that there were differences in the versions of voters’ rolls used at Mashonganyika Building and the Magistrates’ Courts.

Voter education modules could also be put on a website. This would save the Commission travel and other expenses.

4. Nomination Papers
4.1 Please make nomination papers available well in advance of elections. To make the nomination papers available as close to the Nomination Court Day as you did put undue pressure on the candidates.
4.2 Please advertise where nomination court papers can be found. We went to at least three wrong places before we eventually found where they were. Making them available on a web site would be even better.
4.3 Please put a header or a footer on each page of the nomination papers, especially the Presidential ones, so that when they are taken apart for checking, it is still very clear on each page which candidate they belong to.
4.4 Please make all the nominator cells on the nomination forms identical. This was not the case on the Presidential Nomination papers. Cell No 9 on page 31, as well as Cell No 11 on page 28 did not have provision for residential address. This can be solved by typing out only one cell, copying it on to the clipboard and pasting it repeatedly throughout the rest of the document.
4.5 Please proof read the nomination papers before releasing them. There were embarrassing typographical errors as well as legal inaccuracies on the forms. For example, the forms requested one photograph, yet when we got to both Courts, they wanted two photographs. On the Parliamentary Nomination Form, there was a legal inaccuracy which implied that a candidate has got to be a registered voter in the Constituency in which they are contesting.
4.6 There was a major ambiguity on the Nominator Cells for both forms. The last line for each cell which says, “signed in the presence of” did not specify exactly what was required. It could have been the name of the candidate, just a tick or the signature of the candidate. It was not clear. Please remove this ambiguity in the future by explicitly stating that a signature is required, if that is what was required.

5. General
5.1 The Parliamentary Nomination Court only finished at 9.30 pm. It appears to have taken long because it also had to process Senatorial candidates. In the future please consider staggering the dates for Parliamentary and Senatorial nominations. There does not appear to be any compelling reason why they should be held on the same day. Your staff looked worn out at the end of the day. We are sure they would welcome a staggering of these two.
5.2 We understand a passport is not acceptable as a form of identification. Surely that is a valid identity document which is even more difficult to get than an ordinary identity card. Why is a passport not acceptable?
5.3 What safeguards are there against candidates forging nominators signatures? The checkers in the Nomination Courts do not have signatures of all voters, so how do they check them ?
5.4 We understand some political parties began their primaries before publication of Statutory Instrument 11/2008. How did they know the constituencies before this Statutory Instrument was published? Was there an alternative source of this information?
5.5 To access the constituency maps at Cecil House, one had to find one’s way through a warren of rooms. This inconvenience could be avoided if the maps were put on an official ZEC website. To access those maps one had to complete a register which recorded a lot of personal details, stopping little short of asking for one’s grandmother’s shoe size! What was the point of all that? What is the worst that could happen if those details of people consulting maps were not taken down?


6. Polling Day 29 March 2008
6.1 The rate determining step (bottleneck) in the polling process was finding the voter’s name on the voters’ roll. We suggest you consider deploying two or more voters’ rolls per poling station.
You may also want to consider giving the officers manning this step more training and selection effort than others. Addressing this limiting factor should directly translate to improved throughput for the entire polling station.
6.2 Colour differences between ballot papers for different elections were not vivid enough. This resulted in some ballots going in the wrong boxes, which in turn wasted time. We recommend bolder colours for ballot papers in the future.
6.3 The ball point pens provided in the polling booths were not bold enough considering the ballot papers had to be sorted and counted at night, sometimes in poor light. We suggest you consider supplying bold black markers in the future.
6.4 Ballot boxes in some polling stations were nearly full after only a few hours. It was just as well that voter turnout was less than 50% otherwise there could have been problems. Bigger ballot boxes or more polling stations may be required in the future.
6.5 Some polling stations took too long to complete their work. Please consider allowing appointment of alternate election agents to maintain coverage even in emergencies.
6.6 The lighting in some polling stations was unsatisfactory, sometimes with only a couple of lights working in the entire hall. Poor lighting increases the risk of error. Please inspect and address any deficiencies in polling venue amenities.
6.7 We could not find published standardized housekeeping regulations for polling stations. The presiding officers announced the regulations verbally but we were never too sure whether they were standard regulations or the officers were improvising. The first prize would be to publish such regulations as a schedule to the Electoral Act.
6.8 We were invited to witness sealing of postal ballot boxes on less than 24hours’ notice. Furthermore it was not practical to station election agents at the polling stations for a week to observe the postal ballot boxes. Even if we could, it would have provided little assurance because we were not adequately briefed on the processes and safeguards applicable to postal ballots before they arrive at the polling station. This appears to be a risk area which needs more clarification in the future.



We trust you will find some of these suggestions useful as you streamline your systems for the future.

Yours faithfully,
For : CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY



William Gwata
CHAIRMAN

Election Results

This is just to advise you that in the 29 March 2008 elections, the MDC clinched the parliamentary seats in both Harare Central and Mount Pleasant constituencies. In other words our candidates lost. However as previously advised, our primary objective for participating in these elections was to learn the ropes. We will communicate the lessons in due course.

The CDP Team

Roving photographer in Harare Central Constituency on polling day 2008

Gas lamps for counting votes in the event of power cuts.

Polling Station Views Three Hours Ago

Speeches

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY
MOUNT PLEASANT CONSTITUENCY CAMPAIGN SPEECH – MARCH 2008

Introduction
Many of you may relate to me when I say I am tired of all the intolerance within the Zimbabwean political fraternity. Daily we are inundated by local and international media reports about politicians and political parties, from across the divide spending so much time and effort arguing, apportioning blame and trading insults. And all this totally unnecessary negative energy is being fostered at a high cost to the whole nation. Not just to those still within the country and the estimated millions now abroad, but sadly also at the great expense of future Zimbabwean generations. The firemen are fighting over relatively unimportant issues of whom is the best qualified to drive the fire engine, or hold the water hose, while we watch our house being engulfed in flames and raised to the ground.

It is entirely because of this deeply polarised, myopic, often immature and self centred behaviour that Zimbabwe finds itself with the political and economic problems that it has today. Perhaps we take too much comfort in that because it is “the house built of stone”, the stone can withstand the heat and will not burn. And so we falsely console ourselves that with all our resources and latent potential the turnaround and recovery of our country will be fairly quick and easy. Whatever the reason, the situation we find ourselves in is very shameful and highly embarrassing at the very least.

Faced with such despair we can be forgiven for feeling very helpless and despondent. Many right now are completely resigned and banking their hopes for the future on the success at the polls of their preferred political party. There is however something we can all personally, practically do ladies and gentlemen. Something beyond merely marking a ballot paper with an X every half a decade. But perhaps before we go into that let me begin by giving you some more background information on myself and the Christian Democratic Party.

Personal Profile
Paul Arthur Zvikomborero Chaora is the eldest child born to Macleod and Faith Chaora on 8 September 1973 at Nyadiri Mission Hospital in Mutoko. I will be 35 years old this year. My parents are now retired but they were both civil servants with the roots of their careers in the teaching profession. At the time of my birth they were teaching at Murehwa Mission, where we spent the early years of my life, before moving to Mutorashanga Secondary School and then Mkoba Teachers College in Gweru. At the end of 1979 when I was 6 years old our family moved into Harare’s Northwood Suburb and my parents still occupy the same house today. I grew up in Mount Pleasant spending 21 of my now almost 35 years there so it is a neighbourhood to which I feel strong sentiments of home and belonging.

I did my primary and secondary education at North Park School and St John’s College respectively. I am a banker by profession and I’ve worked for 16 years in the financial sector. More specifically I have a background in Treasury, Money and Capital Markets trading. I am an Associate of the Institute of Bankers of Zimbabwe and I hold a qualification from the Association Cambiste Internationale (ACI), an international financial trading association based in France. I am currently in my final year of study for a Master of Science in Finance degree from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.

I began my professional working career with the then First Merchant Bank of Zimbabwe Limited, now African Banking Corporation, before moving to Stanbic Bank of Zimbabwe Limited. In 1997 I joined Tetrad Securities Limited where I was the Director responsible for the Treasury at the time of my departure in 2004. I started a consultancy company, the large part of the period since then having been spent doing work at CABS building society, amongst other interests. I am married to Sarudzai and we have two daughters aged 5 and 7years.
Why Politics
So how and why did I become involved in politics? Related to this, some have also posed the question to me “Don’t you think it is still premature for you to be involved in politics and will you be safe?” Ever since I can recall I have held leadership positions ranging from leading siblings and peers at school, to positions in social club activities and my professional career. I had always envisaged the possibility of being called to political service at some point in my life but admittedly had always imaged this would be towards the twilight years of my working career. I also had no inkling as to how this would occur as of the political parties that were in existence at the time I did not particularly feel comfortable about being associated with any of them.

There are two main issues that have driven me to stand before you today as a parliamentary candidate. The first is the current ailing political and economic situation that our country finds itself in. If one has ideas on potential solutions to the problems that we face should they not strive to find a platform from which to air those views? I think each one of us has an obligation to do so. That effort is severely required by our nation now, today, and we should not wait until some age in the future.

The second reason is a personal one. What I have grown to realise is that my inclination towards political activity is not just a good and noble thing to do as a service to the community should I ever have the opportunity. It is more than that. It is a calling. A calling to ministry. I feel I am called to evangelise the gospel in this manner and for me not to heed that call would be contrary to my personal obligation to God’s commissioning.

Christian Democratic Party
It is mainly this second reason that has lead me to be involved in the establishment of the Christian Democratic Party. In so saying, I am by no means implying that there is no good in other political parties. I am very conscious that there are virtuous Christians and non-Christians that are members of those parties. But the Christian Democratic Party is different from other parties. It is different in that even before the founders sat down to write its constitution, codes of conduct and party policies, the nature of our charter was already defined. Defined in a foundation that not only overrides whatever statute or policy we may come up with as a party, but one that has also been tried and tested by the one true test-the test of time. That overriding foundation is our belief in the Christian principles contained in the Bible as being the will and word of God.

The Party was launched on the 24 January 2008 after close to a year of initial groundwork. Our vision is to see Zimbabwe become the first First World country in Africa. Although Christians constitute the bulk of the membership to date, non-Christians are also welcome for as long as all members respect the party’s Christian ethics. The Christian Democratic Party is not affiliated to any church. The party’s members are members in their own right and are drawn from different church denominations. The party is also unaffiliated to any other party, civic or non governmental organisation neither locally nor internationally. However, naturally, due to the common Christian principles that we share, the CDP is bound to share common positions of interest and policy with churches and other Christian oriented organisations.

The CDP is not a church, we are a political party. We believe in the separation of the functions of the church from the state; however we do not believe that God should be separated from government. The CDP believes in freedom of religion. Everyone has the right to choose their religion, just as we have been given the choice to do so.

We believe Zimbabwe’s development will come from
promoting a culture of long term strategic thinking and investment
levelling the playing field in all sectors
securing and defending people’s right to property
defending the welfare of the weaker members of society and
deploying Christian ethics to combat corruption

The CDP believes in the responsible stewardship of our environment

The party believes in a just and free political system.

We believe in an efficient and competitive public sector serving an open and mixed economy.

Central to being able to achieve all this, is community solidarity and a willingness to be able to work for the common good. This is the one and only key that will unlock and fully open the gate to the road that we want to start travelling on as a nation. It is not necessarily the victory of political party A or B, which so many of us are placing their hope on. It doesn’t matter how fantastic the points on a party’s manifesto sound or how sincere the party is about implementing them. Unless one of their objectives is to fully engage the nation’s human resources then things may improve somewhat initially, but full development will remain stifled. Let me explain what I mean.
Human Resource Utilisation
Zimbabwe is a country endowed with so many resources. We have so much natural resources that sometimes I think our natural resources are the cause for us being so complacent about earnestly working towards the development of our country. Any nation’s greatest resource however is its people. The more of its people a nation can harness together and get to work for a common good, the shorter and easier will be its path to development.

If one studies the financially richest, developed countries in the world, you will note that the majority of them have rather limited natural resources in comparison to many developing nations. But yet they have been able to amass wealth and remain wealthy through the effective utilisation of their human resources. In fact many of them are now also making effective use of our Third World human resources, with the skilled labour transfer that we have been experiencing.

Our country unfortunately in modern history has never been able to fully realise the benefits of its human resource base. Prior to independence we had a system that precluded the participation of a majority of the population in key national issues based on race. After independence we had a situation where minority tribes and races were now precluded. This was to a limited extent partially addressed by the unity accord in 1987. However the divide between the ruling party and opposition parties on national issues has remained so wide that a significant portion of Zimbabwe’s human resources have not been effectively engaged in developing the country. In fact not only have they not been engaged in a common national effort, but often the forces have been working against each other. And with that we have actually gone backwards in terms of being able to utilise our country’s other resources.

At no time has that divide been more greatly pronounced than now. My fear is that many still do not appreciate that this is the biggest source of Zimbabwe’s problems. My fear is that many see the required solution to Zimbabwe’s issues simply as the need for a change in the governing party or a renewal of the current government. Unless the overall winner of the March elections is able to engage the electorate represented by the runners up in the election, we will soon find ourselves in the same position. A position where the contribution towards development by a significant portion of the population is marginalised.

A sense of common purpose is for many emotionally particularly difficult at this point in our country’s history. But it is by no means impossible. We are not in any situation that God in his wisdom, did not foresee when he decreed for us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and even love our enemies. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Not even our house of stone.
Mount Pleasant Constituency Trust
If elected as your member of parliament I will firstly strive to establish this solidarity of purpose within our Constituency. Charity begins at home. The manner I envisage this happening is through the creation of a vehicle that can be used as the community’s rallying point, the Mount Pleasant Constituency Trust. The mandate of the trust is simply to foster the development of the Constituency. The trustees for this body will include the local Member of Parliament, the Ward Councillors, the Officer In Charge of the local police, representatives from the Constituency’s business community and of course representatives of the residents.

An initial phase will focus on the rejuvenation of service provision within the Constituency. Working with the responsible local authorities, the trust will garner resources for delivering civic services such as
the maintenance of the environment around public shopping centres and streets
repairs to public buildings, facilities and roads
ensuring security within the neighbourhoods
supporting the needs of our local health facilities and
sourcing resources for our public libraries

Some members of the community have the misguided notion that it is enough just to pay your utility bill or taxes and then services become the authority’s responsibility. We have an obligation to see to it that what we are contributing for is done and if not why. If you pay for someone to come and do repairs at your home wouldn’t you oversee the job to ensure that it was done satisfactorily? Together with the workmen you would ensure that the item is now working as it should be. Why should we not do the same for our community which is merely an extension of our homes?

One example of where community involvement has effectively worked, to which police statistics will testify has been the establishment in some neighbourhoods of Neighbourhood Watch Committees. The Trust will not be there to take over the responsibilities of local authorities. The Trust will be there to complement local authority efforts, as well as share information and provide advice.

The second phase of the Trust’s programme will focus on promoting the development of additional facilities that the Constituency’s community requires. These may include things such as:

· additional and decent public toilet facilities, and
· the construction of adequate and appropriately located vending facilities

As a long term objective I see the scope for the Trust to engage in promoting income generating initiates such as the promotion of micro community businesses. This could be done in conjunction with the University of Zimbabwe. It is not enough to just provide financing for small businesses. A critical success factor in business is the management. The University would be able to provide these entrepreneurs with advisory services and at the same time provide a practical research and learning environment for its students. A portion of the profits from these enterprises would be contributed back into the Trust and so help assist in the funding of the Trust’s other activities.

The second thing I would do as your elected member of parliament is that I would advocate for parliament through the Ministry of Finance to consider tax relief measures for any contributions made by tax payers to a trust of this nature. Most of these activities outlined are activities that would normally be funded out of central government or local government resources. If a community undertakes to contribute towards these services or initiate such development on its own, it only makes sense that we receive some relief on the taxes we pay.

Decentralising authority in this way ensures that the tax payer’s contributions are being channelled into their local community. The local community also has a more direct influence in how their tax contributions are being utilised.

One pertinent question I have been asked is whether if I am not elected as the member of Parliament I will still continue with the pursuit of setting up the Trust. The reality is that for one who is not in that position, the mountain of co-ordinating that community activity is so much more difficult to climb. A second aspect one would have to consider is whether or not such an effort would not be duplicating the efforts of the elected Member of Parliament. What I can say with certainty is that I would be willing to be involved in such an initiative even if it was initiated by someone other than myself. Our philosophy at the CDP is that we should always share our ideas. If those ideas are implemented by someone else, well then so be it. Our nation will benefit and our objective as a party will have been met.

Conclusion
As your member of parliament I will also undertake to be your voice and actively contribute and engage in debate on issues affecting our wider community, the national community of Zimbabwe. I will be a voice of reason and compromise. I will speak for justice, freedom and the promotion of love between our citizens.

Let us demonstrate what we, the people, are potentially capable of in this Constituency. Let our light shine out to the rest of Zimbabwe and begin a wave of a similar movement.

It is my hope that on the 29 March you will choose to give this initiative a chance by electing the Christian Democratic Party as your representative in the Parliament of Zimbabwe.


Arthur P. Z. Chaora

Mount Pleasant Constituency Parliamentary Candidate

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY
MARCH 2008

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Even with power cuts the show still went on by candlelight.

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