Zanu-PF in massive BVR drive

The successful Zanu-PF workshops on voter education and registration have seen the party coming up with a systematic plan to embark on a massive biometric voter registration exercise to ensure another sweeping electoral victory in next year's polls, a senior party official has said.

This comes after the party's 10 provinces submitted voter mobilisation targets towards the five million supporters the party aims to register for next year's harmonised elections. The party held commissariat workshops in all the 10 provinces on voter education and registration campaign with the last held in Matabeleland North last Sunday.

Party national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere said the voter registration strategy would see the leadership working with the lower structures to engage in a massive voter registration exercise that will guarantee a crushing victory for Zanu-PF.

"After the conferences we held around the country, key issues about biometric voter registration were discussed. Each and every member needs to take part in the exercise. We are starting voter registration afresh under ZEC to come up with a new voters' roll, so the party leadership was challenged to lead members in this exercise so that we manage to register the numbers that will guarantee us victory in the 2018 elections," he said.

Kasukuwere said in the systematic plan to register voters, provincial heads will work with the party's districts and branches all the way down to the party cells in ensuring that every Zanu-PF member eligible to vote in 2018 is registered as a voter.

"What we want is for all our members to register so that the party retains power in the 2018 elections and continues with its mandate of serving the people of Zimbabwe," he said.

Commenting on the chaos rocking opposition parties in their attempts to form a coalition against Zanu-PF in the next polls, Kasukuwere said the ruling party was not worried by "a group of zeroes."

"The President said it before that zero plus zero equals zero. The people that we are dealing with are the same people that we have defeated before, it doesn't matter if they fragment and come back as a pieced together cup, the result will remain the same and we will defeat them," he said.

In his address to the provinces during the commissariat workshops, Zanu-PF secretary for Administration Ignatius Chombo was in campaign mode for the 2018 elections.

"We can never overemphasise the importance of the forthcoming elections that will give Zanu-PF a mandate to continue running the country. The Zanu-PF Government has many pending projects under Zim-Asset that it has to see to fruition. The successful completion of these projects will see the relegation of the MDCs and other opposition parties to the doldrums of political history. Simply put, Zanu-PF has to continue to rule the country, as no one else has anything better to offer," he said.

Chombo said the Zanu-PF Youth League had already set the pace with the Presidential Youth Interface Rallies, "which we have all been overwhelmingly successful."