CAPE TOWN — Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who is also MDC-T secretary-general, expressed his party concerns over voter registration and violence issues, saying: “There’s massive challenges with the voter registration exercise that is taking place.
Report by M&G
“It’s the ordinary hygiene issue of the election, the integrity of the election, we are talking about,” he added.
General elections expected in July should end a shaky coalition government between Tsvangirai’s MDC and President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.
Biti said there was need to “vaccinate” the vote against violence as “self evidently in the last few weeks there have been signs, sprouting shoots of violence . . . potential replication of the 2008 status quo.”
The MDC-T has since the start of the year recorded over 120 incidents of violence and abuse of individuals, he said.
These and other concerns such as inequitable access to the public media by the MDC–T, have been raised with the regional bloc Southern African Development Community (Sadc).
A Sadc security organ comprising three presidents met in Pretoria on Saturday to discuss Zimbabwe and South African President Jacob Zuma said the grouping “will take necessary action” on the issues raised by the MDC. Biti said voter registration is underfunded and inaccessible to many citizens.
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“The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is unable to roll out a mobile voter registration,” he told a news conference in Pretoria. Two thirds of the six-million voters on the roll are dead, said Biti, discussing irregularities with the crucial list.
“But unfortunately, those four million who are dead have had a tendency to resurrect on election day.”
Furthermore, State security forces have been used to up the stakes in Mugabe’s favour, Biti claimed.
“Ordinary people are not registering to vote,” he added. Zimbabwe’s security forces are known to be pro-Mugabe.
Biti further expressed concern at statements by his peers in the coalition government that Western observers will not be allowed to monitor the vote.
“As a country we should have nothing to hide . . . (and therefore) anyone whether from Timbuktu, Beijing or Bali . . . you should be allowed to come.”
The upcoming polls were “the most important” since voting just after independence in 1980, he added.
