In the Special Election Edition, published on 1 August 2013 just before the announcement of the results for the harmonized election, The Legal Monitor appealed for peace to prevail so that Zimbabwe could move into a peaceful post-election period.
While, in general, the lead-up to the 2013 elections was characterised by lower levels of overt violence than the period preceding the March 2008 election and the period before the June 2008 presidential election run-off, there was a deliberate ploy to silence Human Rights Defenders and political activists.
While their mandate was to arrive with a hawk’s eye but some of the election observer missions that observed the watershed July 31 elections seemed blind folded –at least according to contestants, civil society and some developments that were witnessed. The continental body, the African Union, which walked into a storm after its Commission chairperson Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, declared to journalists on the eve of the elections that none of the principals in Zimbabwe’s coalition government had expressed rigging concerns to her, a remark which was disputed and labeled a lie by MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Read moreLM Election Edition
