Why is the voters' roll 'eluding' MDC Alliance only?

The MDC Alliance is complaining that they have been unable to get a copy of the voters' roll from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).

It appears only they have been unable to lay their hands on this very important document because everyone else who needs it and is eligible to getting one has it.

"@ZESN1 has purchased the electronic copy of the 2018 voters' roll. The voters' roll we obtained is searchable and can be analysed. We will assess the voters' roll for accuracy, completeness and currency to build confidence in the credibility of the elections," twitted the Zimbabwe Election Support Network on Monday afternoon.

"After requesting a copy of the voters' roll on Friday, we finally have a digital copy. Huge thanks to our team's head of election systems for his patience and hustle. My team is gold. Next step data analysis," Fadzayi Mahere, an independent parliamentary candidate posted, also on Monday afternoon.

UK Ambassador Catriona Laing said through her Twitter handle that the UK embassy had accessed the voters' roll, posting: "As we have explained, we did what many others have done today which is go to Zec, queue up, pay the fee and receive a CD copy of the roll.  @CSU was there as was EU observer mission."

Added the UK embassy on its official Twitter handle: "Today we managed to access a copy of the voters' roll from @ZECZim offices. Our official went there early this morning, queued, paid 20 US and came back with a copy."

A non-governmental organisation, Election Resource Centre, which sued Zec over the voters' roll last week, accessed a soft copy of the document on Monday too.

The NGO posted on Twitter: "ERC has successfully purchased a copy of the final voters' roll. You can access soft copies for a fee: 1. Ward Voters' Roll $2, 2. Constituency Voters' Roll $10, 3. National Voters' Roll is $20 PS: All candidates can access the Voters' Roll for free."

It is certain that many more interested parties have had access to the version of the voters' roll that is available, the digital one.

The big question is why is it that only the MDC Alliance does not have it?  Have they asked Zec for it and their request turned down? If that is the case, why would Zec give everyone else the voter register and not them?  That is very, very unlikely.

As we have said before on these pages, MDC Alliance thrives on chaos. To them chaos is a campaign strategy. They want to cast aspersions on Zec and the whole system thinking that doing so will, as a matter of fact, undermine the credibility of an election they know they will most probably lose. In our view, they want to begin to do that early enough so that when the figures come out not in their favour, they would turn around and say "there is no way we could have won with all those anomalies we highlighted long back."

It is a strategy they have used before. We can say it worked at that time when the system of the day was excessively inward-looking.

Now the new Government of President Mnangagwa has opened everything up.  The opposition, including MDC Alliance has been all over the country campaigning.  Police are clearing all their rallies. Peace is prevailing all over the country.  Actually, the majority of cases of politically motivated violence that have been reported so far have occurred within MDC-T itself. The Zimbabwe Peace Project, an opposition-aligned civil society body says in a report for May that about 24 cases of political violence happened in MDC-T while only two involved Zanu-PF.

The openness includes the opposition enjoying much coverage in the public media.  In addition, the President has invited observers from all over the world, including those from Europe and America who were barred in the past. Unlike before, Zec will invite representatives of political parties to witness the printing of ballot papers.

All the foregoing measures help enhance transparency in the management of elections in the country.

However, matters of a security nature, among them location of biometric voters' roll servers and procurement of some materials will remain under the strict purview of Zec, which, needless to say, is a constitutional body that cannot be directed by anyone, not least political parties whether governing or opposition.

There is little room for the alliance and its opposition colleagues to find credible excuses but they appear to be clutching at a very tenuous voters' roll one.

We don't think they are succeeding in fooling anyone.

Zec chairperson, Justice Priscilla Chigumba said in terms of the law candidates can only receive free copies of the voters' roll when their names are officially published.

"I think in the next day or so you will see a list of all successfully nominated candidates, presidential, national assembly, and council appearing in newspapers which is also a legal requirement. What the law then says (is) immediately on gazetting the names of those successfully nominated candidates they must be provided with free copy of that voters roll."

Printing of the voter register is underway, she said.

It is our hope that the day when the list of official candidates is gazetted, the printed version of the roll would be available. We will then see what other argument the MDC Alliance would pick against Zec.