Zimbabwe voters roll clean and ready for inspection: Mudede

Zimbabwe Registrar General Mr. Tobaiwa Mudede says the voters' roll is clean and his office was ready to accept anyone wishing to inspect it.

He scoffed at critics who claimed the roll was in shambles.

Mr Mudede said the voters' roll was updated regularly and claims that it was not credible were unfounded.

The Registrar-General told journalists yesterday that no country in the world had a voters' roll that was as 100 percent perfect as Zimbabwe's.

Zimbabwe remained one of those few countries with the best system with nominal percentage error margins.

However, Mr Mudede's assertions have been received with mixed views from political parties, with Zanu-PF agreeing with his observations, while the MDC formations said there was need for an overhaul of the roll.

They insisted that the voters' roll was in shambles.

The RG was responding to allegations in the international and local private media claiming children, deceased persons and people with more than 100 years were on the roll.

"Our system is programmed in such a way that it rejects any person below 18 years of age on data entry. Therefore minor children cannot appear on the voters' roll," said Mr Mudede.

"The RG has repeatedly requested the organisations that are making these allegations to come with names, or evidence for verification. To date such information has not been submitted to us."

Claims of people with more than 100 years appearing on the voters' roll is surprising as the Electoral Act did not discriminate such people from having their names on the roll.

"You don't want these people to attain 100 years, you don't want them to be alive? The law does not say once one attains 100 years he/she should be removed. It is their right to vote unless they come to say they want to be removed. We will, however, still advise them that it is their right to vote," he said.

On deceased persons still appearing on the roll, Mr Mudede said his office could not remove their names in the absence of registration of their death in terms of the Births and Deaths Registration Act.

He said once a person dies and a burial order issued, his office would remove that person's name from the voters' roll.

"If these are the 'ghosts' political parties are talking about, then they must draw comfort in that the system currently in place would require positive identification before one is allowed to vote, which may not be the case with a dead person," he said.

In an interview last night, Zanu-PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo said the RG was the competent authority to speak on the voters' roll and no reasonable person should discredit such observations.

"The best person to make such assessments is the RG, if he is saying it is in order why should one doubt it. We need not operate on speculations that are not correct when the right person is there," said Gumbo.

MDC-T deputy spokesperson, Ms Thabitha Khumalo, said the RG's office had long been discredited in handling issues to do with the voters roll.

"It has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the voters roll is in shambles, Mudede is hallucinating.

There are several people who have either died, young, or octogenarians on the voters roll and these people are used to rig elections," said Ms Khumalo.

"How can you have a person with more than 100 years on the voters roll, with the poverty levels and HIV and Aids ravaging the country and social services having collapsed."

MDC vice president Mr Edwin Mushoriwa said there was need for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the RG's office to work together to come up with a credible voters roll acceptable to all political parties.

"We are quite hopeful that ZEC and RG can work together to produce a voters' roll which everyone would agree with," said Mr Mushoriwa.