Zanu PF in poll scandal

By Fungi Kwaramba

HARARE – It appears as if it never rains but pours for President Robert Mugabe’s warring Zanu PF, after it emerged that the party’s winning candidate in the recent Hurungwe West by-election, Keith Guzah — who has already been sworn in as a Member of Parliament — may have dribbled his way to the seat fraudulently.

If this is established to be true, not only will Guzah lose his seat, it will pile further pressure on the country’s beleaguered electoral body, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec), as well as on Mugabe and Zanu PF who for long have had to deal with damaging allegations from the country’s opposition and civil society organisations that they always cheat their way to power.

The allegations will also do little to dampen the ruling party’s deadly and seemingly unstoppable factional and succession wars that have seen the brutal purging of many of its senior officials, including former Vice President Joice Mujuru — amid untested claims that they plotted to oust and kill Mugabe.

Investigations by the Daily News over the past week suggest that Guzah may not have been a registered voter in Hurungwe West, a development that would automatically disqualify him from Parliament if proven to be true.

Even more damaging for Guzah and Zanu PF, there are increasing doubts about whether he voted in last week’s by-elections, which would also make him not legally qualified to represent the constituency — a development that in turn would mean that his political nemesis and the losing independent candidate for the seat, Temba Mliswa, would be declared the new MP for Hurungwe West under the country’s electoral laws.

Despite all the information to the contrary that is in possession of the Daily News, Guzah himself was adamant yesterday that he had voted — saying he had used a voter registration slip.

However, and surprisingly, he would not name the polling station where he cast his vote when pressed to do so by the newspaper.

“Temba anotaurisa zvakawanda (Temba Mliswa talks too much). If I did not vote, how then did I qualify at the nomination court? I am not going to respond to cheap politics coming from a losing MP. I am not going to make comments on that,” Guzah said.

Pressed further whether his name was on the voters’ roll, he said he had used his registration slip to vote, something that the Zec chairperson Rita Makarau emphatically said was not possible.

“Nobody was allowed to vote using registration slips during the by-elections,” Makarau said firmly.

Constitutional law expert and professor of law at the University of Zimbabwe, Lovemore Madhuku, chipped in and said the Electoral Law was very clear when it came to the qualification of a person to be a parliamentary candidate.

“If you are not on the voters’ roll, and if it is true that he is not on the roll then it means the election is null and void. He cannot be the MP for the area.

“The Constitution in section 125 makes it clear that for one to be MP he or she must be 21 and above and must be a registered voter. The Electoral Act says clearly that for one to be a candidate one must be a registered voter in that particular area,” Madhuku said.

He added that if it turned out that Guzah was not on the voters’ roll, “his election is not only null but he could face arrest because he misled the nomination court”.

“There is a nomination form that prospective candidates must fill in and if you declare that you are registered when you are not this could have serious legal implications,” the respected academic-cum-politician said.

The Daily News was also told by Zanu PF sources as it investigated the matter that senior party officials that include secretary for the commissariat Saviour Kasukuwere and secretary for administration Ignatius Chombo had allegedly been aware that Guzah was not a registered voter a long time ago, but had chosen to ignore — allegedly arguing that “they could circumvent the legal issue as has become the norm in the party”.

Efforts to talk to Kasukuwere and Chombo last night were unsuccessful.

When the Daily News further put it to Guzah that he had in fact been turned away at Rengwe Polling Station as had been the case with other prospective voters who had intended to use registration slips to vote, Guzah said he would rather focus on the future than the past.

“I am not going to listen to whatever will come from Mliswa. I need to serve people first. What is important is I focus on developmental issues affecting the people of

Hurungwe, things like hospitals and infrastructure. I voted, I had a slip,” Guzah said.

A senior party provincial official told the newspaper yesterday that the “revelation was public knowledge and a serious boob on the part of senior party officials” which would see the Hurungwe West seat going to Mliswa.

“It does not even need a by-election to fill the seat,” Madhuku added. “The person who was validly nominated at the nomination court and was a registered voter becomes the candidate for the area because he was the only eligible candidate”.

Another miffed Zanu PF official told the Daily News that the Guzah debacle had

exposed how the party “imposes candidates, even those who are not registered voters” in certain constituencies.

“He claims to have a home in Rengwe which borders Magunje constituency and he went to the nomination court with a slip hoping to register around that time. He must have forgotten to register.

“At a workshop held on June 7 just before the elections, Zec made it clear that they will not accept people with voting slips and his polling agents were all there. He then tried to use a slip in ward 15 at Rengwe,” said the disaffected post-congress Zanu PF official.

Special Muchareva, a polling agent for Mliswa, also recounted to the Daily News yesterday how a supposedly flustered Guzah had almost exploded when he was also allegedly turned away from voting at Feluchi ward 24.

“He had a slip and when he went through the formalities he was frustrated that his name was not on the voters’ roll and he stormed out of the polling station,” Muchareva claimed.

A casual perusal of the electronic voters’ roll that Zec supplied to Mliswa as prescribed by the law did not have Guzah’s name.

Mliswa said yesterday that he had also been informed that his rival did not vote.

“Reports that I received say Guzah did not vote and I am weighing my options,” he said. Daily News