Regional Organizations Bless Zimbabwe Election

An observer team from the African Union has given an initial clean bill of health to Zimbabwe’s elections, which opposition leaders and local civil society organizations are denouncing as a farce. Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, the AU delegation head, acknowledged some problems but doubted they impacted the outcome. Via BBC: The former Nigerian president ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

An observer team from the African Union has given an initial clean bill of health to Zimbabwe's elections, which opposition leaders and local civil society organizations are denouncing as a farce. Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, the AU delegation head, acknowledged some problems but doubted they impacted the outcome. Via BBC:

An observer team from the African Union has given an initial clean bill of health to Zimbabwe’s elections, which opposition leaders and local civil society organizations are denouncing as a farce. Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, the AU delegation head, acknowledged some problems but doubted they impacted the outcome. Via BBC:

The former Nigerian president admitted that there were "incidents that could have been avoided", but he stressed that the AU observers did not believe they could change the overall outcome of the poll.

Another regional organization that had observers on the ground, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), is due to issue its findings today. Early reports suggest it too will express satisfaction.

The Council on Foreign Relations’ John Campbell argued yesterday that both bodies are fatally compromised as election observers:

The head of the AU observers, former Nigeria president Olusegun Obasanjo, was himself involved in three rigged elections at home, as some Zimbabweans observed when the AU announced his appointment. South Africa dominates SADC; as I blogged earlier, South African president Jacob Zuma threw over his Zimbabwe point person, Amb. Lindiwe Zulu, when Mugabe demanded it. It looks like SADC and the AU wanted the elections to “go away,” rather than insist that they be credible. Both organizations are likely to experience further issues of credibility with respect to elections in the future.

Whatever the failings of the AU and SADC, the European Union is suggesting that it will lean heavily on their findings.

More: For a smart 2011 take on the diplomacy of election observation, see this post from Jay Ulfelder. Key graf:

If the international observers’ summary statements sound like dodges or spin, that’s because they often are. The goals of these reports are not only to describe and assess the balloting but also to discourage political crisis and encourage future improvements. In other words, they are political and diplomatic exercises as much as they are forensic ones.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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