Zimbabwe has made the international headlines several times in recent months, drawing the world’s attention to its catastrophic economic situation – inflation now stands at 2.2m per cent – and to the electoral processes that have taken place in that country.
Following the March 2008 legislative elections in which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) obtained the majority of seats – 110 out of 210 – and the first round of the presidential elections held at the same time, political violence increased to such an extent that President Mugabe’s contender in the presidential election, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the MDC, withdrew from the run-off scheduled for 27 June 2008. With more than 80 MDC supporters killed, some 200,000 people displaced, hundreds disappeared and no possibility to campaign freely and safely, the MDC leader felt that he could not expose MDC supporters and voters to further violence.
This situation led the IPU Executive Committee to state on 20 June 2008 that it was not possible “to hold free and fair elections in Zimbabwe under the present circumstances and that any claim to the contrary would not be in the interest of the people of Zimbabwe or the international community”. Earlier, during the 118th IPU Assembly held in Cape Town in April 2008, Assembly President, Speaker Mbete of South Africa, had already expressed concern at the failure of the electoral authorities to release election results and had affirmed the right of the people of Zimbabwe to determine their future through free and fair elections.
The Assembly had also called for Parliament to be convened as early as possible “so that the people of Zimbabwe are not deprived of their rightful voice in the government of their country”. Yet the new parliament has still not been convened. What is more, ten MDC parliamentarians-elect have been arrested on criminal charges and detained, one has been abducted (his whereabouts are unknown) and six are believed to be in hiding. Despite the agreement brokered between Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai which is expected to “clear the way” for talks on a power-sharing arrangement, the fear remains that the seats of those parliamentarians-elect are at risk.
In recent years, the situation of Zimbabwean members of the parliament has been a source of constant concern to the IPU. Parliamentarians belonging to the MDC have faced harassment, arbitrary detention, fabricated charges and even torture ever since the party participated in elections for the first time in 2000. This even led to an on-site mission of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians in March/April 2004. Although some of the cases dealt with by the Committee were settled satisfactorily, the most serious ones, those involving torture and beatings of opposition parliamentarians, have remained on its agenda, as those responsible for torture and beatings have not yet been brought to justice. It is hoped that the new parliament will do all it can to ensure that justice is done and that the political violence, which has marked so much of Zimbabwe’s history, becomes a thing of the past.
