Zec dismisses opposition's claims

THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) has dismissed claims by the opposition that the voters' roll has been manipulated against their favour as "mischievous and preposterous".

Zec said the voters' roll inspection exercise which is currently ongoing had been instituted to clean as well as fix errors and irregularities which some are raising now.

The electoral management body said people with queries about how their registration information had been recorded will get their queries addressed.

A snap survey by The Herald in Harare yesterday showed people visiting inspection centres to verify their voting status and registration details — but according to ZEC, many are preferring to check their registration details virtually.

ZEC opened the voters roll for inspection on Saturday and the process will end tomorrow, with more than 11 000 centres having been opened countrywide to enable voters, who registered on/or before April 28, to check their registration details.

However, since the start of the inspection exercise, some people have been reporting that their names were missing from the voters roll while others have even claimed that their names have been struck off the voters roll.

The opposition then took the anomalies as a target on their members when the irregularities are actually universal and being corrected.

In an interview with The Herald yesterday, ZEC vice chairperson Ambassador Rodney Kiwa said the inspection exercise had been above board and sought to rectify such anomalies.

He said the opposition had been malicious to make such allegations as the electoral body was not affiliated with any political party.

"The rationale for the voters roll inspection is to ensure every registrant is accurately captured on the roll and all corrections made. To suggest that members of a particular political party are targeted for exclusion is not only mischievous and preposterous as we are fully independent of any political party influence and in fact, when registering people, we do not seek their political alignment, it would be illegal and unethical," he said.

Amb Kiwa said once the inspection ends, errors would begin to be fixed but early indications showed that people were opting to check their registration statuses virtually.

"We are compiling figures from all the inspection centres. My take so far is that registrants were/are using our USSD platform *265# more than they are physically turning up to check. But let the figures speak for themselves. I should be able to speak authoritatively end of the day Friday."

President Mnangagwa yesterday proclaimed August 23 as the date for the harmonised elections.