adminWhen the voters roll is flawless, those who come second best in an election will accept defeat gracefully.
However, it is a potential source of serious political conflict when it becomes abundantly clear that some people coming from other areas were fraudulently registered as voters in other constituencies.
It is against this backdrop that we call upon officers at the Registrar General’s Office and Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to execute their duty diligently and plug these leakages and ensure the voters’ roll is a true reflection of bona fide voters.
Yesterday we carried a story in which the Mashonaland East Zanu-PF leadership unearthed massive irregularities in the voters’ roll where suspected MDC-T officials registered their supporters using other people’s addresses and unoccupied, condemned hostels.
The revelations emerged at the party’s provincial co-ordinating committee meeting in Marondera at the weekend, where at least 200 MDC-T supporters would give a church address as their place of residence.
It is the MDC-T that has been complaining about the voters’ roll alleging that it was in shambles and this latest expose has let the cat of the bag and the MDC-T appears to be the one that has been abusing the RG’s office and manipulating the voters roll in order to garner votes fraudulently.
This also calls for serious investigations into the operations of some of officials at the RG’s office because why were these MDC-T officials allowed to register their people, some of who do not live in Marondera.
The Marondera case, we think, could just be a tip of an iceberg as indications are that this practice might be rampant throughout all provinces as parties try to win polls using unorthodox means.
Officials from the RG’s office in Marondera are aware that these flats were condemned decades ago and why were these MDC-T officials allowed to register as voters using addresses of those hostels in the absence of proof of residence.
This is electoral fraud and all the prospective legislators who bussed their supporters to those registration centres, the voters themselves and officers in Marondera and other parts of the country should be investigated.
Instead of assisting the RG’s office to remove names of dead people in the roll, the MDC-T officials are creating another problem that is likely to see poll results being contested on that basis.
We call upon all parties in Zimbabwe’s body politic to ensure that their supporters’ conduct as they seek political office is beyond reproach. As opinion leaders, they should be leading by example.
They should ensure that their supporters carry correct documents required for one to be registered as a voter, among them water, electricity, telephone bills or affidavits written by landowners of properties they occupy in cases of tenants because voting in Zimbabwe is ward and constituency-based.
It is an undisputed fact that the majority of people in urban areas do not own houses and it is against this background that there must be water-tight mechanisms that ensure that unscrupulous well-resourced aspiring legislators do not bus people from elsewhere to register to vote in areas they want.
There is serious bickering among political parties and recently there were reports that some aspiring candidates were separately carrying their supporters to register as voters.
In as much as some individuals have the right to be voted into office, we suggest that the process of encouraging people to register as voters should be political parties-driven, not individualistic.
We therefore commend Zanu-PF for bringing such electoral fraud to the attention of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the RG’s office will find a way of dealing with this challenge before the forthcoming elections.
A stitch in time saves nine.
Online Reporter