PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday came under fire for reportedly backing the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) secretariat which he has exonerated for any electoral wrongdoing.
Staff Reporter
Tsvangirai on Tuesday defended the secretariat saying it was competent to run the upcoming referendum, while blaming an “underhand” force for the “shenanigans” that led to the 2008 disputed polls.
The statement signalled an about-turn by the Premier whose MDC-T party has been demanding an overhaul of the secretariat on the grounds that most of its members were State security agents.
MDC spokesperson Nhlanhla Dube said Tsvangirai’s closeness to President Robert Mugabe had compromised him to an extent he now agreed with everything the President said.
“All we want to say is that his (Tsvangirai) closeness to Mugabe has become a problem. That remains a question to us which can only be answered by him,” Dube said.
Director for the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, Pedzisayi Ruhanya, said Zec was not qualified to run the referendum, considering its 2008 record in which it took close to a month to release presidential election results.
“Zec is compromised and it needs to be reformed because it’s the same secretariat that was involved in the 2008 elections,” Ruhanya said.
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“I do not know what has changed that makes a political party to think that it is competent.” Ruhanya posed.
But chairman of Zanu Ndonga, Reketayi Semwayo, defended Tsvangirai saying the secretariat had changed.
“He (Tsvangirai) is right. Almost everyone is reforming in the secretariat. They are now seeing the light,” Semwayo said.
“Everyone doubted the secretariat, but now they are becoming transparent and we can see what they are doing.”
