adminMr Tobaiwa Mudede yesterday said the voters’ roll running on the website was illegal as the law did not allow an individual to reproduce a voters’ roll for inspection.
The online ‘voters’ roll is being run inconjunction with the controversial Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe (IDAZIM), a quasi-political grouping linked to the MDC-T and whose officials are currently in court facing charges of impersonating police officers.
Mr Mudede said the dubious ‘voters’ roll contained information that was obtained by one Topper Whitehead, a self-proclaimed election analyst, who inspected the voters’ roll on behalf of MDC-T in 2004.
“Apparently, the man behind the website is a person identified as Topper Whitehead who was declared persona non-grata in this country and is currently in South Africa,” he said.
“He considers himself an expert on the Zimbabwean voter’s roll, a thinking which is not proper. They created their own roll which they are messing around with after Whitehead came to our offices before he was permitted to conduct an inspection.
“Security personnel came to him and had to ask him why he had overstayed and was manipulating people’s identification numbers.
“They wanted to take action against him before he disappeared and we tried to track him. His aim was to give an impression that the voters’ roll was not clean, corrupted and in shambles.”
Mr Mudede said Whitehead called himself an expert of the voter’s roll when he was not an official of the RG’s department.
“We cannot have someone in SA saying something about what is taking place in this country,” he said.
“He was manipulating the roll before he disappeared.”
The logo of IDAZIM appears at the bottom of the website as one of the partners in its operation.
IDAZIM is run by MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai’s staffers Tabani Mpofu, Felix Matsinde and Mehluli Tshuma, together with former Harare councillor Warship Dumba.
The four were recently arrested for generating fake dockets against Government officials whom they accused of corruption.
On the wesbite, registered voters are encouraged to enter their identification numbers on a slot given to check if their names are on the voters’ roll.
In most cases, the information that comes out is wrong, with some voters being placed in wrong constituencies.
MDC-T spokesperson Douglas Mwonzora said the MDC-T had no problems with the fake voters’ roll.
He absolved Mpofu, Matsinde, Tshuma and Dumba of being involved in the scam.
Online Reporter