MDC-T demands changes at ZEC

By Douglas Mwonzora

Today (Monday) the MDC leadership led by the National Chairman, Hon Lovemore Moyo met the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) at a special meeting organized for political parties at the ZEC offices in Harare. 

The meeting was necessitated by the letter which the MDC had written to ZEC expressing concern over the preparations of the watershed elections especially on the crucial issue of voter registration.

All the political parties expressed dismay at the manner in which the voter registration exercise was being carried out by the Registrar General’s office especially in the rural areas.

The MDC demanded that the residence requirement under which potential registrants were required to furnish the Registrar’s offices with letters from traditional leaders to prove their residents in various wards must be scrapped.

This is because this requirement was being abused in some areas resulting in some people being denied these letters by the traditional leaders on political grounds.

The MDC delegation demanded that potential voters could use specially designed affidavits under which they stated under oath their places of residence. This had already been the position taken by the negotiators to the Global Political Agreement.

The MDC submitted that the appointment of persons to run elections had to be done in a politically inclusive manner. This includes the appointment of voter educators as well as polling officers.

During the referendum the ZEC only appointed ZANU PF sympathizers in the form of ward youth officers to work as the polling officers. This is unacceptable.

Although the government had announced that mobile voter registration targeting mainly rural communities was supposed to commence on the 3 rd of January 2013 nothing in that regard has materialized to date. The MDC demanded that the mobile voter registration exercise be embarked upon as a matter of urgency.

The draft constitution now allows the so called Aliens to vote in the national elections. To that end the MDC demanded that the registration of the so called aliens be commenced immediately in anticipation of the coming into operation of the new constitution.

The MDC reiterated it’s lack of confidence in the ZEC secretariat and demanded the appointment of a politically neutral ZEC secretariat to run the elections.

The Accreditation and Observation Committee of ZEC is not politically inclusive. The MDC therefore demands that there must be total political inclusivity of the Accreditation and Observation Committee and the National Logistics Committee.

Douglas Togaraseyi Mwonzora ( National Spokesman )