What is needed to preserve the dictatorial rule of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe? According to the country's opposition, a ruthless ruler, stalwart soldiers and Israeli software.
Zimbabwe held parliamentary and presidential elections this week. Mugabe, who has ruled the country since independence in 1980 is facing strong opposition after leading the country to economic ruin in recent years. The country's opposition and foreign election supervisors claim that the Mugabe and his supporters had no intention of holding a free and fair election, and that they are using the software of an Israeli start-up Cogniview Ltd., which can alter pdf files to update voter registration lists to meet ZANU's needs.
The accusation has put the small start-up with ten employees from Or Yehuda at the center of a storm.
Cogniview CEO Yoav Ezer calls the story "codswallop". On his blog, he writes, "Last Thursday, a newspaper called “Zimbabwe Online” published an article accusing my company of helping Robert Mugabe, the infamous Zimbabwean president, rig the Zimbabwean elections. The article continues to claim that my company has secret ties to the Israeli Mossad, and that the accusations came directly from the General Secretary of the MDC, Zimbabwe’s largest opposition party. Before I go on with the details of the story, here’s my official response … this story is NOT TRUE. In fact it could have only been more fictional if we were accused of using alien technology."
Ezer notes that the story quickly spread and appeared in more newspapers. His explanation for the events is that there is a link to Cogniview’s website on the last page of the Creative Commons license document. He says, "I also learned (from the people that called to chastise us) that the voter-roles that were provided to the MDC by Zimbabwean officials were in PDF format and had a link to Cogniview’s website. My guess is that the people at the MDC wanted to get the voter data in a format they could easily handle (like Excel) and instead got it in a PDF file (that was produced by our converter). They got (justifiably) angry and concocted a story about the Israeli Mossad and my company (this part isn’t justifiable)."
Ezer says that he is prepared to help clear up what he calls "this mess". He writes, "Every respectable party (UN, US, European) that will want to investigate this matter will get Cogniview’s full cooperation. We will give them unlimited access to our legal and financial records. We will also allow them to interview any employee in the company. Heck, they can strap us all to lie-detectors - we have nothing to hide. But I’m hoping it won’t come to this. This story has the potential to damage my company’s reputation as well as to seriously damage the credibility of the MDC officials who spread this lie."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 3, 2008
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