Preventing Electoral Fraud report SAIRR May 11 ... - AfricanLiberty.org

elections. In these exceptional circumstances, provision must be made for members of
Zimbabwe's extensive diaspora to cast their vote. It is understood that many within the
diaspora insist that they will not return until Zimbabwe is a democracy, but once truly
free and fair elections have taken place more restrictive voting regulations for
Zimbabweans temporarily abroad would apply.
Recommendations
The ZEC must be reconstituted without any members of the preceding,
discredited commission. In addition the greatest care must be taken that only
independent and impartial citizens are appointed to the ZEC.
A new and independent Registrar-General should be appointed.
An impartial and international body should be employed to draw up a new
biometric voters' roll.
Once drawn up, the new voters' roll must be made accessible to all citizens as
quickly and cheaply as possible.
Thereafter, each new version of the voters' roll should be audited by a professional
body to ensure, by means of spot checks, that deceased voters are being properly
removed from the roll and that no barriers exist to the registration of legitimate
new voters.
The audit report of this professional body should be transmitted to Parliament for
debate and discussion.
7) Since the ZEC still has not fulfilled several key elements of its mandate, it must
also, at least on its website:
(a) set out the legal framework for the conduct of elections;
(b) define the roles and powers of election observers;
(c) provide full registration statistics;
(d) issue full reports on each election; and
(e) make provision – as is now the norm in many countries – for citizens to
check their registration status by internet and SMS.
8) Provision must be made for members of the diaspora to vote, along the lines
indicated above.
Conclusion: The Difficult Birth of Zimbabwean Democracy
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have found that when they
are called in to help countries which have fallen into acute economic difficulties,
sometimes their prescriptions work well and on other occasions they don't at all. When
such cases were examined it was found that the crucial difference was that in some
countries their recommendations were enthusiastically followed by governments who saw
them as the way out of a mess, but in other countries (and Zimbabwe was such a case) the
government was essentially hostile to their recommendations and was grudging in
carrying them out. In the first case things worked well, in the latter badly or not at all.
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