ZESN Report on the 31 July 2013 Harmonised Elections These factors on their own fundamentally undermine the degree to which the results of the 2013 Harmonised election can be considered to reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people. When compounded by the massive bias in the state media, the campaign of intimidation in rural areas, the lack of meaningful voter education, the rushed electoral process and the harassment of civil society leaving the credibility of these elections severely compromised. ZESN calls on the African Union, the Southern African Development Community to be objective in their evaluation of these elections and take into cognisance the pre-election issues that have a bearing on the ability of citizens to genuinely choose their government. We reiterate that, it is not sufficient for elections to be peaceful. For elections to be credible they must offer all eligible citizens a reasonable opportunity to register to vote; to inform themselves about the candidates; to vote on Election Day and for their votes to be properly counted. We are deeply concerned that for urban voters the first three principals have already been violated. Methodology As a non-partisan body, ZESN observes elections to ensure that Zimbabweans to freely exercise their right to vote and provide citizens with independent information on the process. As an umbrella network we do not support any political party, but rather we support the right of all eligible Zimbabweans to exercise their constitutional right to vote. ZESN conducts its observation efforts in conformity with the Declaration of Global Principles for Citizen Election 68 Observation and Monitoring, which was launched at the United Nations on 03 April 2012 as well as the Principles 69 for Election Management, Monitoring and Observation in the SADC Region (PEMMO). Our findings and recommendations are made in reference to: the laws of Zimbabwe; the Southern African 70 Development Community (SADC) Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, as well as other regional and African election standards. We deployed over 7,000 observers comprising mobile observer teams, stationary polling station observers at specific polling stations, and constituency observers deployed to ZEC Constituency Centres to witness the collating of results. A special group of more than 700 observers were deployed to a sample of polling stations in every province and constituency of the country to provide national representative data in real time. This preliminary statement is based on the observations of this group of observers. 68 69 70 see http://www.gndem.org/declaration-of-global-principles see http://www.eisa.org.za/EISA/publications/pemmo.htm see http://www.idasa.org/our_products/resources/output/sadc_principles_and_guidelines/ 89 | P a g e