'Strengthen intra-party democracy'

A foreign funded election watchdog, Zimbabwe Election Support Network (Zesn), has implored political parties to strengthen intra-party democratic processes to avoid incidents of double candidacy.

This comes after double candidates cropped up in the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) on nomination day last week.

Critics also bashed the opposition party's decision to use the consensus candidate selection process instead of primary elections.

CCC has since attributed the chaos to the ruling Zanu-PF, accusing it of forging signatures on nomination papers to unsettle their party ahead of the August 23 harmonised elections.

But following a report on the nomination process, Zesn said political parties should strengthen intra-party democratic processes.

"Political parties should endeavour to strengthen intra-party democracy processes to avoid conflicts such as the fielding of two candidates," Zesn said.

Zesn said the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) should have conduct comprehensive voter education before nomination to ensure that candidates were acquainted with nomination court requirements.

There were also reports that several candidates were not ready on the nomination day.

Zesn said political parties and independent candidates should be encouraged to submit their papers before the sitting of the nomination courts.

"From the observations made by Zesn members, it appears that several candidates and political parties were ill-prepared for the nomination court process.

"Most of the political parties and independent candidates had not submitted their papers in advance which made the nomination process painstakingly slower and in some cases with the nomination court sitting until the early hours of the next day," Zesn said.

The network cited the case  of Raymond Chitsinde from the Zimbabwe National Revival Party who intended to file nomination papers for the Mazowe Central seat, but had his papers rejected after he turned up at the Harare Magistrates Court instead of Bindura Magistrates Court.

"In another case, the FORUS party candidate for Glen View North failed to pay nomination fees, while the UZA party Dzivarasekwa candidate's name did not appear on the voters roll.

"In several provinces including Manicaland and Mashonaland West provinces, MDC-T candidates' submissions failed to be considered after they failed to pay the nomination fees," the report said.