News / National
Tsvangirai sues Mugabe
15 Sep 2017 at 06:44hrs | Views
The Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC-T has filed an urgent application at the High Court seeking to stop the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) from proceeding with the biometric voter registration, arguing the electoral commission was not yet prepared for the exercise.
MDC-T filed the application yesterday citing President Robert Mugabe and Zec as respondents through an affidavit by the party's secretary-general, Douglas Mwonzora.
Mwonzora said his party was seeking the suspension of proclamation No 6 of 2017 which Mugabe issued on September 8, 2017 in terms of the Electoral Act.
Mwonzora said the reason why his party wanted the exercise to be halted was because Zec had previously announced that it had no sufficient biometric kits and servers to enable the proper storing of data countrywide.
"… From the second respondent's (Zec) own report that only 400 electoral biometric registration kits have been procured, it is evident that, by and large, there are no kits to commence registration. The servers have not been procured yet," Mwonzora said.
"It was expected that a further 2 600 kits would be procured for the actual new voter electoral registration process countrywide. The kits would work with servers which are used to store biometric data gathered in the registration process. There would be district servers and a national server … Notwithstanding the proclamations, the second respondent is clearly not prepared for the beginning of the new registration of voters."
Mwonzora further said besides the concerns his party had raised with the commission, there were also other reservations over the custody, location of servers, transmission of data from the polling station to the district servers and the national server and access of political parties to inspect the servers before information is stored and audit information stored on the servers.
"Clearly, the September 14, 2017 fixed as the date to commence the voter registration is highly ambitious and unattainable. On September 5, 2017, it was announced that there would be a training of trainers for the purpose of carrying out the new registration. To date, there had been no training of the actual personnel who are supposed to be on the ground to conduct the registration process further confirming the unpreparedness of the second respondent," he said.
"Furthermore, the applicant (MDC-T) has previously demanded from the second respondent information on the identity of the registration personnel. This is important as applicant along with other political parties has long registered concern over the possible involvement of security and military personnel in the process."
The matter is yet to be set down for hearing.
MDC-T filed the application yesterday citing President Robert Mugabe and Zec as respondents through an affidavit by the party's secretary-general, Douglas Mwonzora.
Mwonzora said his party was seeking the suspension of proclamation No 6 of 2017 which Mugabe issued on September 8, 2017 in terms of the Electoral Act.
Mwonzora said the reason why his party wanted the exercise to be halted was because Zec had previously announced that it had no sufficient biometric kits and servers to enable the proper storing of data countrywide.
"… From the second respondent's (Zec) own report that only 400 electoral biometric registration kits have been procured, it is evident that, by and large, there are no kits to commence registration. The servers have not been procured yet," Mwonzora said.
"It was expected that a further 2 600 kits would be procured for the actual new voter electoral registration process countrywide. The kits would work with servers which are used to store biometric data gathered in the registration process. There would be district servers and a national server … Notwithstanding the proclamations, the second respondent is clearly not prepared for the beginning of the new registration of voters."
Mwonzora further said besides the concerns his party had raised with the commission, there were also other reservations over the custody, location of servers, transmission of data from the polling station to the district servers and the national server and access of political parties to inspect the servers before information is stored and audit information stored on the servers.
"Clearly, the September 14, 2017 fixed as the date to commence the voter registration is highly ambitious and unattainable. On September 5, 2017, it was announced that there would be a training of trainers for the purpose of carrying out the new registration. To date, there had been no training of the actual personnel who are supposed to be on the ground to conduct the registration process further confirming the unpreparedness of the second respondent," he said.
"Furthermore, the applicant (MDC-T) has previously demanded from the second respondent information on the identity of the registration personnel. This is important as applicant along with other political parties has long registered concern over the possible involvement of security and military personnel in the process."
The matter is yet to be set down for hearing.
Source - newsday
