Mutumwa Mawere

It is now 40 days since Zimbabweans voted and yet the outcome is not what they may have had in mind.

President Mugabe and his team are still in charge and so is Gono.

It is evident that President Mugabe's harmonisation project has gone sour and he now finds himself in a corner of challenged hope that was planned to be Tsvangirai's permanent address.

Through Gono's quasi-fiscal activities, the ruling party had designed a subtle and sophististicated model to steal the election but Zimbabwean voters at least saw through it.

For the first time since independence, ZANU-PF, the ruling party, is challenging the parliamentary results in 53 constituences. Who would have thought that in its petitions, Zanu-PF will, among other issues, contend that MDC-T bribed election officials?

MDC-T is also challenging 52 constituencies.

If Zimbabwe was a normal country this turn of events would be laughable but this is serious business, where even an observer from another planet would agree that the electoral playing field was not level given the use of the state machinery on partisan lines, where it is perfectly conceivable and highly likely that the will of the people may be reversed by a judiciary sufficiently tainted by Gono's opaque activities.

Can any sane person trust the Zimbabwean judiciary? Is the Zimbabwean judiciary still independent and impartial? Who is financing the judges and the judiciary? We all know that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has now replaced the executive and legislature and according to Gono, it now reports to one principal, who unfortunately now finds himself an underdog with abundant state resources at his disposal if the run off was to be held.

Gono's appointment represented one of many schemes designed to assist ZANU-PF's electoral chances. To some extent Gono managed to do what Professor Moyo had succeeded to do to the media. He managed to shift the focus from a dysfunctional and failing state to third party non-state actors.

Instead of using physical force, he used subtle methods underpinned by state security agents' support. This was meant to intimidate and whip into line all potential pockets of opposition. Individuals were targeted and assets were seized all in the name of national interest.

With Gono at the helm, ZANU-PF and its President could no longer be blamed for causing the economic meltdown. He had over promised that he would be able to turnaround the economy in as much as he had credited himself for turning around the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe (CBZ) while forgeting that the so-called CBZ turnaround was a meer mirage.

State resources were channeled to CBZ and used to bolster the financial performance of the bank with Gono appropriating to himself the credit. Anyone who had studied the CBZ experience would have known that Gono at the RBZ would behave no differently.

If anything, the past 28 years of President Mugabe in power has created a new culture in Zimbabwe where the head of state is a victim of gossip and lies to the extent that even now he may have been convinced by his system that it is indeed true that MDC-T stole the elections through bribing.

President Mugabe cannot deny that the land, computers, generators and tractors that were given to potential voters prior to the elections did not constitute bribing. What is different is that the source of funds for President Mugabe's so-called generous donations was the state in which the opposition also has a stake.

The RBZ has been transformed into a partisan election agent and it is evident that the post election Monetary Statement was designed once again to influence the run off elections. While Gono is busy at work using cash as an instrument, the other organs of the state are also at work using physical violence to send the message home that no change is good and believable change.

It is common cause that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is an organ of a state that has been operating in a partisan manner so is the Electoral Court. Having been a victim of Unchena and Makarau's injustice, I am acutely aware of the risks that lie ahead for the MDC parliamentarians whose constituencies have been targeted for reversal by ZANU-PF.

In my case, I have been a beneficiary of legally strange rulings by both Makarau and Uchena to have no confidence that justice can be expected by MDC. In the remote chance that the Electoral Court can rise to the challenge in as much as the ZEC did in the politically motivated recount, I still believe that President Mugabe does not respect the will of the people and will do whatever it takes to remain in power.

At this stage, the legitimacy of an incumbent who lost the first round of elections would be dented and yet there is no evidence that the state machinery has internalised the possibility that President Mugabe's tenure may be limited. This begs the question of what Gono and his fellow securocrats know that we do not know.

In the post election period, there is no evidence that partisanship is on the wane in terms of how the state is conducting its affairs. Gono is still operating as if change is a foreign word in Zimbabwe. Even the parliamentary results would in normal circumstances act as a warning sign to state agents who are bent on subverting the will of the people.

Many have observed that Gono is good barometer of what President Mugabe is thinking. So far, I can say that the warning signs are all over that the game is not over.

It is not entirely inconceivable that Gono may have already sufficiently compromised even the opposition parliamentarians through financial lubrication to the extent that the majority that Tsvangirai may think he has may well be speculative.

It is common cause that Gono financed many of the candidates and to the extent that we know his political allegiance, it is highly likely that a new scenario may be in the works.

Diplomats and non-state actors are all beholden to Gono for foreign exchange transactions at favourable exchange rates. To what extent has Gono poisoned the democratic process and sufficiently compromised the democratic institutional framework to the advantage of his principal is a matter that should concern all.

It is remarkable that the opposition has not asked for SADC to assist in investigating the role of Gono in the pre-election period as well as identifying the beneficiary list of state largasse under his watch. The world knows what the securocrats are doing to innocent people in Zimbabwe but little is known about Gono's works in undermining the will of the people.

It is important that the conversation broadens to locate Gono in a broader framework of the democracy project so that appropriate responses are put in place before the will of the people is once again reversed by a judiciary that historically has been impotent in terms of adjudicating on electoral complaints of the opposition.

It is rational to expect that injustice will be expeditiously handed down in the current electoral disputes and the complection of the parliament may well change before the run off.