CCC to consult community members on preferred election candidates

Main opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has set April 5 as the date for selecting its candidates for the upcoming harmonised general elections to be held later this year.

Unlike its rival Zanu-PF, CCC has no community based structures to go for internal elections in order to select candidates.

The party made it clear that it was a citizen movement party hence it would consult people on the way forward regarding leaders.

Addressing journalists in Harare, CCC secretary for elections Ian Makone said April 5 has been set as the date for candidate selection. The process is going to be presided over by members of the Independent candidate selection panel (ICSP).

“Community members, who have signed into our citizen membership database, shall be consulted to nominate their preferred candidates for each category in their representative categories,” Makone said.

“In the event that more than one nominee comes up to a position, there is a process of consultation within the community which will be the second round of interface with communities with a view to arriving at a single candidate per electable position.

“All nominated individuals will undergo our internal vetting process to ascertain their suitability. We will not want to be given candidates by our opponents.

“After the vetting and validation of nominated candidates, a full list of successful candidates will then be announced and further validation is undertaken before confirmation of the full list of those candidates by the national citizens assembly.”

Makone said a grievance handling committee would also be set up to resolve disputes.

On the selection benchmark used to come up with the ICSP, CCC deputy spokesperson Gift Siziba said: “We are a movement and a movement has its values. In terms of the criteria, we set the criteria and got recommendations from different people who we think matter in our internal process.

“It is on that basis that we brought the names and subjected them to the council at the national level to make a decision.”

Meanwhile, Zanu-PF primary elections held last weekend were marred by reports of rigging and violence. The plebiscite resulted in several party bigwigs losing their constituencies.

Results are yet to be officially published but a Zanu-PF spokesperson yesterday hinted that there would be re-runs in several places where issues of rigging and violence were reported.