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<<previous | index | next>> BackgroundZimbabwe has held regular general elections every five years since its independence in 1980. The general election scheduled for March 2005 will occur in a deeply divided society. In the general election in June 2000, the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF), won sixty-two of the elected seats against the Movement for Democracy’s (MDC’s) fifty-seven seats and Zanu-Ndonga’s single seat. As a result of a number of by-elections and the recent imprisonment of an MDC member, ZANU PF now has sixty-seven elected seats and the MDC fifty seats. ZANU PF’s parliamentary majority is further increased by an additional thirty seats for presidential appointees. The general election in 2000 and the presidential election in 2002 were controversial. While most African observer groups declared the results a legitimate expression of the people’s will and the process largely acceptable,2 Western observer teams generally found the electoral process flawed. The government’s aspiration to introduce an independent electoral authority has the potential to build voter confidence in the legitimacy of the electoral process in the run-up to the general election in March. SADC’s interests in the political situation in Zimbabwe are significant. The region must cope with Zimbabweans who have left their country for political and economic reasons. Moreover, SADC’s relations with the European Union and the United States have been strained over the issue of Zimbabwe. After the SADC Heads of State summit approved the Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, the Prime Minister of Mauritius and the new chairman of SADC, Paul Berenger, emphasized the significance of the upcoming election in Zimbabwe for SADC, saying: “With free and fair elections in Zimbabwe at the beginning of next year, we can already start preparing for the normalization of relations between SADC, the European Union and the US.”3 [2] The observer groups, who were generally satisfied with the conduct of the election in 2000, included the South African Parliamentary Observer team, the SADC Parliamentary Forum Election Observer Delegation, the Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC countries, and the Organization of African Unity Observer Team in Zimbabwe. Among the more critical observers were the Commonwealth Observer Group and the European Union Election Observation Mission. For the presidential elections in 2002, the SADC Parliamentary Forum Observer Group, the Norwegian Election Observer Group, and the Commonwealth Observer Group were among those observers who found the conduct of the election flawed. In contrast, official observer teams from South Africa, Nigeria, Namibia, and the Organization of African Unity, all found the election to be legitimate. [3]Comment: “Mugabe not ready for Sadc Charter,” Zimbabwe Standard, August 29, 2004
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