THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons ranging from their reported failure to release the new voters’ roll to other operational issues.
Editorial Comment
Opposition parties have organised their supporters to demonstrate against the Zec administration for lack of transparency in the organisation of the 2018 harmonised elections.
They believe the way Zec was preparing for the elections was aimed at giving the ruling Zanu PF an advantage over the opposition much to the chagrin of the majority of their supporters.
Given all this, the pointers show that Zec is headed to holding a disputed election. This could plunge the country into chaos.
It is regrettable that Zimbabwe has never really held credible elections free from disputes especially in favour of the ruling party’s candidate President Robert Mugabe.
While Zec is tasked to prepare for the elections, according to the Electoral Act, its proposal to suspend electoral officials’ voting rights is a flagrant breach of the Act.
This follows Zec chairperson, Rita Makarau’s announcement that all police officers and electoral officers deployed outside their polling stations during the voting period will not be allowed to vote.
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We believe voting is a right no one can take away as long as the individual concerned would want to exercise their right.
What boggles the mind is why Makarau would set herself to flagrantly breach not only the Electoral Act, but the Constitution where freedom of expression is guaranteed in the governance charter.
All officers of the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Zec and other security clusters are deployed away from home on polling day, and one wonders why Zec would want to stop them from exercising their right.
Although Makarau argued that special voting or early voting is gone, which means that each and every one of them has got to be in their ward and at home or near home on polling day, it is important that all these government workers would be on national duty.
To say they will not be allowed to vote because they are on national duty would be inconsiderate, and, hence, illegal, to say the least.
We believe that Zec should make provisions for all those that would be on national duty to exercise their right as per the Constitution. We cannot agree more with the Election Resources Centre in pushing for their right to vote in the next elections.
We do not believe that Makarau’s action to ban them from voting will address opposition calls for transparency in the forthcoming plebiscite. We call on sanity to prevail for the good of the people and the country’s laws.
