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The Centre for Elections and Democracy in Southern Africa (Csdsa), which won an application compelling the holding of harmonised elections on July 31, yesterday congratulated the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission for successfully holding the polls. Cedsa director Mr Jealousy Mawarire approached the Constitutional Court to compel President Mugabe to set the date for the holding of the polls upon the expiry of the Seventh Parliament’s life on June 29, but the court ordered the July 31 deadline to give more time for preparations.
“Cedsa deployed more than 500 election observers on election day throughout the country and reports coming from the observed polling stations indicate that ZEC managed to conduct themselves professionally with all polling stations observed opening at 7am with adequate materials needed to process voters,” the organisation said in a statement.
“Cedsa was particularly impressed with the rate at which voters were processed which resulted in most polling stations having processed all voters in the queues by 7pm.
“Cedsa also noted that most voters, especially in urban areas, were not aware of their particular wards and most pitched up to vote at polling stations in wrong wards and for this reason, were advised to visit their correct wards to vote. Most of these voters were then recorded as having been turned away notwithstanding the fact that most of them would eventually vote once they found a polling station in the correct ward.”
Cedsa said it recorded several cases where voters went to various wrong polling stations before finding the correct one where they would cast their ballots although they would have been recorded as turned away at the other polling stations.
“CEDSA observes that this unfortunate occurrence where voters did not know their correct wards has been manipulated by some quasi-political organisations which have inflated the figures and want to purvey inaccurate information that millions of voters were turned away from polling stations,” it said.
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