The Financial Gazette

Editor — A frightening assault on our democracy is being flagged.

 Tendai Biti, the Finance Minister, has come out suggesting that holding elections will cost us US$200million. Seeing that there is an average five million voters in Zimbabwe, this figure translates to US$40 per individual voter. Considering that each political constituency, calculated as some 40 000 voters per demarcated area, we are looking at US$1,6 million per constituency! All for a vote, which might very well be negotiated away.
The amount of money raises a number of questions. US$200 million is big money. How did the minister arrive at this figure? What costs does this monstrous amount cover considering that election agents are  drawn from civil servants who are already covered by the civil service wage bill? Aside from petty allowances for additional work, one does not see them as a prohibitive cost to the election budget. Even as we add election agents drawn from non-State sectors, the cost hardly makes a dent.
So where does the money go? We might be told about the pre-election demands. But even these, including the voters roll, are matters already within the existing fiscal allocations. The Registrar-General’s office, should have a reliable record of who has turned 18 and therefore elligible to vote, who is dead and therefore can no longer vote and who is within the country etc. It will make the task of updating the voter’s roll an easy task.
The flagging of figures serves more as a political blackmail than anything else. Not that I agree to elections under the current conditions, but one has to be wary when a ‘democrat’ uses such tactics as a distraction.
Any rational person is bound to query the opportunity costs of holding elections. US$1,6 million is a lot of money. It is enough to transform constituencies, provide seed money for local income-generating programmes and fund schools and clinics. The list of immediate possibilities is endless. It can even be longer should the elections fail to be conclusive, resulting in a ‘runoff’. And if one is to compare this to the US$40 000 (US$8 million in total) that was budgeted for each constituency under the “constituency development fund”, the mischief is glaring.
Which reminds one of the 2008 3,7 billion CFA francs election assistance requests by Guinea-Bissau prime minister to the international community. In response, Portugal offered electoral materials — ballots papers, boxes, booths and indelible ink. All this represented 75 percent of the total cost of the elections, and at a cost of 41 million CFA francs! We do not need to speculate much why the figures were so inflated.
Compare this with India, the world’s biggest democracy. It pulled its last election with a budget of under US$300 million. It has more than 700 million voters.  Or with Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent. It has budgeted US$500 million for its 2011 elections. Its voting population hovers around 170 million. One wonders what is so special about our elections to make them so expensive.
Zimbabwe is a fairly cheap country compared to Nigeria. The cost of services and labour is way low. Public resources are equally meagre. Our national budget is half that of Lagos.
We cannot even bring ourselves to comparisons with India. Our net-worth is a minuscule when compared to this emerging giant. So why should the process of choosing who should govern and lead us become so prohibitive?
With all the other criminal onslaughts associated with our electoral processes, one would expect that what is within the control of democrats in this government should reflect different ethos.
An election should not be financially punitive to the electorate.
It is the role of democrats to ensure that democratic processes are as affordable as possible and can pass the moral test when presented against competing interests. 
Tapera Kapuya

Australia

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