REGISTRAR-General Tobaiwa Mudede has accused non-governmental organisations of abusing their access to the country’s voters roll to manipulate it and give the impression that it is in shambles so as to please their foreign funders. Report by Everson Mushava
Addressing reporters in Harare yesterday, Mudede said such behaviour destroyed the credibility of Zimbabwe’s future elections and had the potential to cause civil strife.
“People will say elections were not free and fair and therefore must be nullified or declared null and void,” Mudede said.
“Such actions by some human rights organisations can cause serious political unrest with grave consequences, resulting in people fighting across the political divide, killing or injuring one another. The country will, unfortunately, be plunged into turmoil.
The country will become ungovernable due to civil unrest.” Mudede announced that Zimbabwe’s voter population as of November was 5 589 355.
President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Tsvangirai, the biggest contenders in the next elections, would be battling to secure about three million voters to ensure an outright victory.
The RG, long accused by the MDC-T of manipulating the voters’ roll in favour of Mugabe and his Zanu PF party, said some NGOs were conduits of external forces whose motive was to discredit Zimbabwe’s elections.
“By having such access to our voters’ roll, which is available to them in good faith, some of the NGOs have unashamedly manipulated our voters roll as a way of discrediting our electoral system.”
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Mudede’s remarks came after police last week raided ZimRights offices and arrested two of its employees for allegedly manufacturing fake voter registration certificates. The two appeared in court on Monday and were denied bail.
Mudede also blasted non-governmental election lobby group, Zimbabwe Election Support Network for allegedly conducting a workshop to deliberately discredit the voters roll.
Mudede has often been criticised for failing to update and remove deceased voters’ names from the roll, some with ages well above 100 years.
