Extreme Fraud That Warrants Nullification of Zimbabwe’s 2018 Presidential Poll

Zimbabwe’s 2018 Presidential election outcome represents the will of the counters and not of the voters. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announced that Emmerson Mnangagwa of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) got 2,460,463 votes (50.8%) followed by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance’s Nelson Chamisa with 2,147,436 votes (44.3%). My investigations indicate that these are falsified results meant to rob Chamisa of what appears a clear victory. The rigging mainly centred on falsification of V11 forms and deliberate fraud in tallying or tabulating results. Five major trends emerge so far that demonstrate this fraud. One can also use the five areas as a means of further investigating. I have no doubt the findings will be the same. That is fraud.

First, the results show false voter turnout. In some polling stations the turnout was more than 100%. In simple terms, more people voted than those who were registered to vote at the polling stations. For example, at Chiredzi government B secondary school in ward 7, 864 people voted out of 473 registered voters. This is not an isolated incident. So far, I have detected more than 100 polling stations with similar trends. This is a clear case of falsification of numbers as statistics is ever likely to show. Consequently, a sufficient reason to nullify the election and order for a fresh poll managed by a competent and impartial electoral management board. In the 2013 general election, this was justified by the use of voter slips but this time there was no such following the biometric voter registration. No wonder ZEC officials did not post results in more than 2 000 polling stations.

Second, some provincial results that were announced by ZEC do not match those that were recorded on V11 forms (which show the polling station totals) and displayed outside polling stations. I have used Harare Province as a case study. From the V11 forms I have gone through, Chamisa already got 568 579 votes. However, ZEC announced that Chamisa got 548 889 votes. It just does not add up. The falsifiers deflated Chamisa’s votes to favour Mnangagwa. Such brazen electoral fraud is serious to warrant nullification of the vote. The Harare case hints at substantial deflation and inflation of votes in other provinces.

Third, there are patterns that appear to show invented numbers if one analyses the digits. There are 12 polling stations that show the same figures for all the 23 candidates. Some polling stations follow a certain constant of zeroes. This becomes peculiar because such polling stations had a very high voter turnout and virtually all the votes were for Mnangagwa. This is likely due to falsification of V11 forms and deliberate fraud in tabulating results. Take for example, at Gore village in ward 8 in UMP, 450 valid votes were cast. Mnangagwa got 448 votes and Ambrose Mutinhiri 2 votes. Chamisa and the other 20 candidates got 0. It diverges from the norm of the distribution of the Chamisa vote and raises a lot of questions. The digit zero is appearing much more often as compared with uncorrupted numbers in other polling stations. Another candidate, Thokozani Khupe, despite endorsing the election, also observed this phenomenon. She said, ‘we also have issues with ZEC, the numbers were manipulated because there were polling stations where we know that our agents voted and our relatives but when results were being announced we were told that we have zero, ZEC did not give an explanation on that.’ This obviously skewed the outcome in favour of Mnangagwa.

Fourth, the bulk announcement of Presidential votes per province aided falsification of results and deliberate fraud in tallying or tabulating results. The official announcement of results must be constituency based. The announcement by Province ensured that results were not traceable in real time, verifiable and made it easy to tamper with numbers in the aftermath to suit the aggregate. In addition, the v23b forms (which show the constituency totals) were never availed to Morgan Komichi and Jameson Timba who were Chamisa’s election agents. ‘Silaigwana told me that results were not going to be announced before verification. To my surprise ZEC chair went on to announce the results…’, testified Komichi. If results are not verifiable surely they should be nullified.

Fifth, there was engineered high turnout in specific targeted polling stations that favoured Mnangagwa. Suspiciously, most polling stations in Mashonaland Central Province that had more than 90% voter turnout favoured one candidate. Certainly something bizarre went on. ZEC claims that 483 423 voted in Mashonaland Central but the same ZEC announced on polling day that at 1730hrs only 105 000 people had voted. So 378 423 voted in less than 2 hours because polls closed at 1900hrs. Observers did not report any flood of voters in the last hour. Even if one argues this could be possible, this was strangely different from the turnout trends in all other parts of the country. Why an exception? Something is rotten. In my view, the falsifiers added non-existent votes in favour of Mnangagwa. But adding votes meant that the turnout diverged from the typical distribution and from practical possibilities. A forensic audit can augment this.

The five trends above suggest that the extent of the fraud was sufficient to falsify the Presidential result and advantage Mnangagwa. Note that I am not even referring to other types of fraud, such as intimidation of the rural folks, state financed prebends, control of traditional leaders, use of the army to back ZANU PF in the campaign and unequal access to state media that unfairly influenced the outcome. A change in 0.8 percentage points in Mnangagwa’s total would strip him of the 50% +1 vote needed to win in the first round and trigger a Presidential run-off.

The courts (though captured) and observers have a democratic duty to reject this fraud which is visible to anyone who chooses to look. They must stand firm despite the fact that the Mnangagwa government is running a campaign to deceive some external observers to accept the flawed outcome. Failure of which, Zimbabwe is back on a democratic and economic regression path.

By Dr. P. Zamchiya

Email: pres1zamchiya@gmail.com

10 August 2018

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Source: AfricaMetro