LIVINGSTONE MARUFU
The European Union Electoral Observation team has raised a red flag over the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC)’s continued bias and unclear voters’ roll, which throws into question the integrity of future elections.
The EU said despite ZEC carrying out multi-party liaison committees meetings more frequently and giving out some freedoms, there is still a long way to go for Zimbabwe to observe a free and fair election.
“Pretty soon the European Union Electoral Observation is going to publish a report from the mission that they did in Zimbabwe and we are waiting for their assessment and we will take that for a dialogue.
“But there were some red flags on the electoral commission bias and voters’ roll,” outgoing EU Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Timo Olkkonen, told Business Times.
“In 2018, the team gave 23 recommendations to Zimbabwe and followed up to assess the progress and what was taking place, therefore, we are waiting for their assessment and see the way forward after the final assessment.”
Recently, the European Union Election Follow-Up Mission was deployed to Zimbabwe to assess the status of implementation of the recommendations of the EU Elections Observation Mission (EOM) of 2018 and to discuss ways to achieve further progress on electoral reform in view of the 2021 elections.
The mission met with ZEC, the Zimbabwe Media Commission, several ministries, political parties, civil society organisations, media and the international community.
In its report, the mission said progress on the implementation of the EU EOM recommendations has been limited, with the majority of the priority recommendations not yet adequately addressed.
“The EFM stated that it welcomes that stakeholder consultations on some legal reforms have taken place or are on-going but also noted with concern that the adoption of important reforms, such as amendments to the Electoral Act, remains outstanding,” it said.
The mission said it appreciated initiatives made by the ZEC to increase its engagement through the Multi-Party Liaison Committees at district and provincial level but considered that further determined efforts are needed to fully respond to its role as an independent and transparent election management body.
“This includes that there is more transparency on every step of the electoral process on local, regional and national level,” it said.
ZEC spokesperson Jasper Mangwana argued that the country’s electoral body has been transparent and independent.
“As you may be aware, Zec is working on an updated voters roll following a national mobile registration blitz and inspection of the voters roll exercise.
“The updated voters roll will be gazetted and be available to the public once the exercise is complete. The independence of the Commission is guaranteed by the Constitution of Zimbabwe (section 235),” Mangwana said.
Zimbabwe heads to the polls next year. Opposition political parties this week turned their guns on ZEC after it gazetted fees which will see a presidential candidate paying a registration fee of US$20,000 to contest in the elections.
