18 • • • • • • • • Freedom of Association; Freedom of Assembly; Freedom of Movement; Freedom of Expression; Incidence of Political Violence; Disputes over electoral procedures and electoral irregularities; Occurrence of voter education; Use of food as a political weapon. These “atmospherics” were developed from the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. These “atmospherics” are assumed to give a good indication of the “freeness” of the election climate during the pre-election period. The intention is not to examine the more formal aspects of the election, the “fair” component”, but to look at the experiences of ordinary citizens. The NCA has already made its own position clear on the legal and constitutional framework, the “fairness”, governing these forthcoming elections. Each “atmospheric” is defined by a number of questions. These questions have been developed through previous experience with the kinds of election irregularities seen in recent elections in Zimbabwe. From the questions defining the “atmospherics”, an Election Irregularity EI score can be derived, and, in the current system, 18 scores or measures are derived. This can then be summed to give an indication of the scale of the Election Irregularities occurring or not in any given constituency. The value of this system is that it directly samples the views of ordinary citizens during the preelection period, and hence gives a good feel for their confidence in the “freeness” of the prevailing election climate. The NCA will attempt to provide reports on a weekly basis, where possible, but will nonetheless issue reports on the Provinces as the data comes in. The individual Province [and constituency] reports will then be summarised in a number of consolidated reports. Copies of the reports will be placed on the NCA website [www.nca.org.zw], but copies can also be requested from the NCA directly [info@nca.org.zw]. National Constitutional Assembly: Election Climate Reports.