Festive season spoils Nkulumane by-elections - ZESN

Zimbabwe Election Support Network has said the pathetic low turnout during Saturday's Nkulumane by-election was due to the current festive season and boycotts by other political parties.

Zanu PF's candidate, Killian Sibanda won by 2161 votes.

Only 3238 people voted out of 34 000 registered voters

The main voters' roll for Nkulumane had a total of 13,331 registered voters of which 5,121 were male (38%) and 8,234 (62%) female.

The supplementary voters' roll had 20,787 voters of which 11,071 (53%) were males and 9,715 (47%) females.

"ZESN observer reports show that the turnout was generally low with voters trickling in throughout the day. Most of those who turned out to vote were mostly women with a significantly low number of youths turning out to cast their votes.

"The low voter turnout for the Nkulumane by-election is consistent with trends during all the 2014 and 2015 by-elections.

"These trends may be attributed to the fact that major opposition political parties have not participated in the by-elections, and also the timing of this by-election which coincides with the festive season where people travels to different holiday destinations. Another contributing factor could be that the by-election was held during the festive season" it said in its preliminary statement today.

ZESN recommended that   ZEC should devise voter education programmes that lure the youth and other voters in general to fully participate in electoral processes.