BY HARRIET CHIKANDIWA

MDC-T legislator Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga (proportional representation) yesterday said the 2018 elections were handled better than previous elections and praised President Emmerson Mnangagwa as a reformer.

Speaking after meeting visiting Norwegian leader of the standing committee of foreign affairs and defence, Anniken Huitfeldt at Parliament Building, Misihairabwi-Mushonga, who was representing the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs, said even election observers endorsed the 2018 polls as “better than before”.

“I speak from an opposition point of view and want to say this is the first time I had a peaceful election. In previous elections, I used to go into hiding because the situation was risky,” she said.

The MP, from the Thokozani Khupe-led MDC-T, said even international observers were allowed into the country during the 2018 elections.

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However, the legislator said there were post-electoral problems like the August 1, 2018 violence, which resulted in the Motlanthe Commission of Inquiry being set up to investigate the shooting to death of six civilians by the
military.

She told Huitfeldt that some of the recommendations by the Motlanthe Commission were that there must be political reforms.

Misihairabwi-Mushonga then praised Mnangagwa as a reformer, adding that people must acknowledge him for the work that he was doing.

“The President is one of the reformers and if he moves in a particular direction and if there is no acknowledgement of the changes that he is making, then we are strengthening the hardliners also. The Foreign Affairs minister (Sibusiso Moyo) is one of the reformists we have and he has pushed for reforms,” she said.

Misihairabwi-Mushonga said the international community was hostile to Zimbabwe because they did not like the late former President Robert Mugabe.

“They had a problem with the individual and not the party,” she said.

Huitfeldt, who is in the country for three days to meet different political players and the European Union, told NewsDay that she wanted to learn more about Zimbabwe’s post-electoral environment after the developments of the 2018 general elections.