News / National
ZEC has final say on the delimitation process
16 Jan 2023 at 18:31hrs | Views
Despite receiving heavy criticism on its preliminary delimitation report, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has the final say on the process, the Electoral Resource Centre (ERC) has revealed.
A 13-member parliamentary ad-hoc committee set up to review the report presented by ZEC condemned it, arguing that lacked merit and contained several constitutional violations.
ERC programmes manager Solomon Bobosibunu told CITE in an interview while parliament had an oversight role on all institutions in the country, they can only make recommendations to ZEC, which can either be adopted or thrown out.
"This report that is being debated in parliament is not the final report, the final report is the one that ZEC is going to compile after that report that is coming from parliament, ZEC is then going to consider or not to consider part of the recommendations that are coming from the report or the committee," said Bobosibunu.
"The next step from there is this report is going to be sent back to the Electoral Commission, preliminary report, their maps together with the report of the AD HOC committee of Parliament. ZEC will then consider or not consider those recommendations in this report."
Bobosinu said ZEC had the final say on the process despite pressure coming from various stakeholders.
"Whether all the stakeholders like it or not, ZEC has the final say, whatever they are going to say is the final decision. Even if we are going to provide submissions now, ZEC might say we still feel strongly that this is necessary for us to do and we are sticking to this and those will become the boundaries that the President will sign," said Bobosibunu.
Bobosibunu said the electoral management body had up to the 25th of February 2023 to produce the final report which will then be presented to the president.
Delimitation is the process of dividing the country into constituencies and wards for the purpose of elections of persons to constituency seats in the National Assembly and of councillors to local authorities.
A 13-member parliamentary ad-hoc committee set up to review the report presented by ZEC condemned it, arguing that lacked merit and contained several constitutional violations.
ERC programmes manager Solomon Bobosibunu told CITE in an interview while parliament had an oversight role on all institutions in the country, they can only make recommendations to ZEC, which can either be adopted or thrown out.
"This report that is being debated in parliament is not the final report, the final report is the one that ZEC is going to compile after that report that is coming from parliament, ZEC is then going to consider or not to consider part of the recommendations that are coming from the report or the committee," said Bobosibunu.
"The next step from there is this report is going to be sent back to the Electoral Commission, preliminary report, their maps together with the report of the AD HOC committee of Parliament. ZEC will then consider or not consider those recommendations in this report."
Bobosinu said ZEC had the final say on the process despite pressure coming from various stakeholders.
"Whether all the stakeholders like it or not, ZEC has the final say, whatever they are going to say is the final decision. Even if we are going to provide submissions now, ZEC might say we still feel strongly that this is necessary for us to do and we are sticking to this and those will become the boundaries that the President will sign," said Bobosibunu.
Bobosibunu said the electoral management body had up to the 25th of February 2023 to produce the final report which will then be presented to the president.
Delimitation is the process of dividing the country into constituencies and wards for the purpose of elections of persons to constituency seats in the National Assembly and of councillors to local authorities.
Source - cite.org.zw
