Zec in major climbdown

By  Mugove Tafirenyika

The under-fire Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) has set up multi-party committees to work at ensuring transparency in the processes leading up to the 2018 national polls.

About 18 political parties, coalescing under the banner of the National Electoral Reform Agenda (Nera) have been pressing Zec to take their demands on board as part of ensuring that the eagerly-anticipated 2018 national elections are not tainted by irregularities.

On Monday, the political parties met with Zec where they agreed to set up nine subcommittees which  will work on all contentious issues in the current electoral cycle which include voter registration and accreditation of monitors and observers.

“We agreed to constitute nine multi-party subcommittees to exercise oversight over the Zec subcommittees to ensure maximum transparency during voter registration, polling station mapping and accreditation, among other processes,” Nera legal secretary, Douglas Mwonzora told the Daily News yesterday.

Mwonzora, who is also opposition MDC secretary-general, said some of the committees constituted also include the legal and logistics sub-committees.

He also revealed that Zec had requested the parties to come up with proposals on how to deal with the alleged military element in the electoral body which has been one of the sticking issues during previous discussions.

“As the MDC, we offered to prepare and present a legal report on how to deal with the security services people who are at Zec.

“We are looking at ways of demilitarising the institution to ensure that come 2018, we will have elections that are beyond reproach

“We discussed the disenfranchisement of the Diaspora, aliens and prisoners and I think we are making very good progress, though not as quick as we would have wanted.

“Nevertheless, we believe if we continue on this trajectory, there will be tangible and positive movement,” added Mwonzora.

The development comes across as a major climbdown by Zec, which last month vowed it would not allow any political party to be directly involved in the national mapping exercise.

This was after the parties demanded that they be involved in the mapping exercise that will see voters being restricted to voting at a specific polling station in their ward in future elections.

Under Nera, the opposition political parties are demanding a raft of changes which include reconstituting the Zec secretariat with they allege is packed with Zanu PF functionaries.

The parties also want Rita Makarau to relinquish one of her posts as a way of avoiding a potential conflict of interest if elections are to be disputed and spill into the courts.

Apart from being Zec chairperson, Makarau holds a full- time job at the Judicial Services Commission where she is its secretary. Daily News