Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) chairperson Justice Rita Makarau has dampened any hopes of compiling a new voters’ roll for the 2018 elections arguing that the law did not allow them to scramble the old one, which observers feel is fraught with mistakes and ghost voters.
By Phyllis Mbanje
While admitting the mistakes which have always been a highly contentious issue, Justice Makarau told stakeholders during a feedback meeting on the pilot voter registration, that her hands were tied and they would adopt the old voters’ roll from the Registrar- General (RG)’s Office, but would improve on it.
“Zec cannot invent a new voters’ roll, the law is very specific and so we adopt the old one. The faults will now be ours,” she said. “To us as Zec, it will all be new because it will be the first time to handle registration of voters which was previously done by the RG, but on the other hand it will still be the old voters’ roll that we will use.”
Justice Makarau said while many people might claim to dislike RG Tobaiwa Mudede they still used documents from his office to carry out their transactions.
“We might not like Mudede, but the current system makes use of documents from his office. Tell me what other documents can we use then, our degrees?” she challenged the participants.
The various speakers and other participants were, however, concerned about the cleansing of the voters’ roll and if Zec was really capable of restoring confidence in the system which has been dogged by mishaps and controversy. They also called for regular integrity testing of the voters’ roll.
MDC-T official Murisi Zwizwai said Zec should strive to produce a credible voters’ register. “Zec should start on a clean slate.
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“My party still will not participate in any elections until the reforms have been implemented,” he said. The director of the Electoral Resource Centre Tawanda Chimhini said among other pertinent issues, the voters’ roll still raised questions.
“People want to know if there is going to be a new one or how the old one will be cleaned up so that once again credible elections might be held,” he said.
Chimhini said while some improvements had been made like the production of an electronic voters’ roll, Zec manually registered voters.
