Chamisa sets date for CCC candidate selection

THE Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has set April 5 as the date for selecting its candidates for the general elections likely to be held in August.

CCC election directorate head Ian Makone told journalists yesterday that the party would not hold primary elections.

"Community members, who have signed into our citizen membership database, shall be consulted to nominate their preferred candidates for each category in their representative categories," Makone said.

Zanu-PF held its primaries last weekend that were marred by violence, chaos and reports of rigging. The ruling party has since been releasing preliminary results of winners, minus what they polled, pending endorsement by the politburo.

Makone said CCC's candidate selection process would be presided over by members of the Independent candidate selection panel (ICSP), with nominees given an opportunity to either accept or decline.

"In the event that more than one nominee comes up to a position, there is a process of consultation within the community which will be the second round of interface with communities with a view to arriving at a single candidate per electable position," Makone said.

"All nominated individuals will undergo our internal vetting process to ascertain their suitability. We will not want to be given candidates by our opponents. After the vetting and validation of nominated candidates, a full list of successful candidates will then be announced and further validation is undertaken before confirmation of the full list of those candidates by the national citizens assembly."

Makone said a grievance handling committee would also be set up to resolve disputes.

On the selection benchmark used to come up with the ICSP, CCC deputy spokesperson Gift Siziba said: "We are a movement and a movement has its values. In terms of the criteria, we set the criteria and got recommendations from different people who we think matter in our internal process.

"It is on that basis that we brought the names and subjected them to the council at the national level to make a decision."

Meanwhile, the CCC on Tuesday met United Nations resident humanitarian co-ordinator Edward Kallon in a closed-door meeting.

The meeting comes as Zimbabwe hobbles towards harmonised elections later this year.

Recently, CCC implored the UN to intervene on issues of electoral violence and to oversee the country's upcoming general elections to avoid a disputed outcome.

The party's deputy spokesperson Gift "Ostallos" Siziba yesterday told NewsDay that during the meeting on Tuesday, Kallon emphasised on free and fair elections.

"The meeting discussed how to promote peace in Zimbabwe pre-and post the harmonised elections. The conversation that we had with the UN was a look at the pre-election environment. We raised our concerns, particularly around issues of lack of access to the voters roll in verifiable and auditable form," Siziba said.

"The United Nations said they will intensify efforts to ensure that Zimbabwe has peaceful and credible elections by working with all political parties," he said.

Siziba said Kallon would issue a statement on the UN position on elections after the international body has met all players involved in this year's polls.

"We also raised issues to do with electoral reforms; and the collective view of Zimbabweans on the role of the UN in our elections so that they are free and fair," he said.