Morgen Komichi sworn in as Senator

Farirai Machivenyika  Senior Reporter
MDC-T deputy national chairperson Mr Morgen Komichi, who is currently serving 350 hours of community service at Mabelreign Clinic in Harare for fraud and contravening the country’s electoral law, was yesterday sworn-in as Senator for Midlands province by Clerk of Parliament Mr Austin Zvoma.

Mr Komichi missed the swearing of most legislators as he was in remand prison where he spent 97 days.

He was sworn-in in terms of Section 128 (1) of the constitution that requires a legislator to take oath before he takes his seat in Parliament.

His swearing-in was greeted with applause by MDC-T legislators while the President of the Senate Cde Edna Madzongwe also welcomed him back.

Speaking in an interview after the adjournment of Senate, Mr Komichi said it was through God’s grace that he was spared a custodial sentence.

“In the first place I and a lot of other people had lost hope that I would be out of the maximum prison but it was at the end of the trial that God intervened and ensured that while the judgment was tough the sentence was manageable,” he said.

Mr Komichi reiterated that he never committed any crime and said there was a conspiracy to have him incarcerated. Komichi was found guilty of criminally obtaining a Zimbabwe Electoral Commission ballot paper which he marked, sealed and re-opened in a bid to cast aspersions on the electoral body to abet his party’s bid to discredit the harmonised elections. Harare magistrate Mr Tendai Mahwe sentenced

Komichi to 12 months in prison on fraud charges and six months for contravening the Electoral Act Chapter 2:13, to make it 18 months in prison. The magistrate, however, set aside eight months for five years on condition Komichi does not commit an offence involving dishonesty and contravening the electoral laws and then suspended the remaining 10 months on condition Komichi performs 350 hours of community service. Komichi was arrested on July 28, for misrepresenting to ZEC that he ‘picked up’ from a dust bin, a sealed tamper-proof envelope with a special vote ballot paper at the Harare International Conference Centre.

He approached ZEC deputy director of public relations Mr Tendai Pamire and told him that an unnamed person informed him that they had picked the envelope from a dustbin at the HICC where the special vote was being processed.

Komichi said he opened it out of curiosity and discovered that there were ballot papers cast by the police in favour of MDC-T by Constable Mugove Chiginya.

ZEC officials reported the matter to the police and investigations showed that Cst Chiginya had failed to vote in the special voting exercise as his name had not been called out by the presiding officer.