ZESN Position Paper on Election Dispute Resolution

This paper on Election Dispute Resolution (EDR) departs from the point that the electoral competition is often accompanied by disputes and tensions as political parties and candidates jostle for power. The subject of the paper, Zimbabwe has been experiencing election disputes and election-related conflicts especially since the emergence of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the late 1990s.  The antagonistic relationship between the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) and the MDC have extremely polarised the country with ripple effects on the electoral processes. The paper shows that the disputes and tensions arising from electoral competition must be managed so that they do not become either a source of violent conflict or escalators of an existing conflict…more