COALITION of Democrats (Code) leaders yesterday slammed President Robert Mugabe threats against opposition and civil society activists, saying it proved the country was being led by a dictator who does not countenance different views.
BY PAIDAMOYO MUZULU
The leaders were reacting to Mugabe’s threats during his address to Zanu PF youths, war veterans and supporters on Wednesday that the police should arrest protesters.
Code is a coalition of opposition political parties that include Elton Mangoma’s Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe, the Welshman Ncube-led MDC, Simba Makoni’s Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn and Gilbert Dzikiti’s Dare.
“This confirms that Mugabe is a dictator as his threats only apply to his opponents and not Kudzanai Chipanga (Zanu PF youth leader) when he calls upon party youths to demonstrate,” Makoni said.
Mangoma said opposition parties would not be cowed by unconstitutional threats.
“One person (Mugabe) cannot wake up and say that the right to protest is gone. It is better to be arrested while exercising our right than sitting silently in fear. Who is he? We are all Zimbabweans after all,” Mangoma said.
The opposition leaders also said Mugabe’s threats explained the police brutality during the shutdown protests on July 6.
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“It (the threats) answers the violence that we recently witnessed during the shutdown,” Dzikiti said.
Code leaders also criticised plans by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) to use a biometric voter registration system (BVS) for the 2018 general elections, saying this was not tamper-proof.
“BVS’ main advantage is to curb duplicate voting. Although duplicate voting takes place, it is by far not the main method used by Zanu PF and Zec to rig elections. The main methods used include fear, coercion, Zec and its staff and the electoral management system used,” the Code statement said.
They also said a computer system could be manipulated and very few, if any, of the political parties and civil society had any skills to detect such manipulation.
