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Temba Dube Senior Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) will today complete deployment of 97 350 polling officers to the country’s 9 735 polling stations, in readiness for the harmonised elections tomorrow. In a statement yesterday, updating stakeholders of its preparedness for the poll, Zec announced that it would release information required by the law, regarding ballot papers today.
“Printing of ballot papers is now 95 percent complete. The Commission is in terms of Section 52A of the Electoral Act [Chapter 2:13] to disclose where and by whom are the ballot papers for the election being printed, the total number of ballot papers that have been printed for the election and the number of ballot papers that have been distributed to each polling station and special polling station.
“Since this is a statutory requirement and since the ballot papers printing and dispatch is still under way, the Commission will not disclose those details at this forum but will do so before Election Day and that means tomorrow,” read the statement.
It is stated in the statement that dispatching of election material and equipment was under way to various provinces, including ballot papers for completed areas.
The Commission announced that it had accredited 13 210 election observers out of more than 20 000 who had applied, by the expiry of registration on Sunday.
A total of 11 781 local observers were accredited.
“The Commission will not entertain any new applications from any person or organisation but will from now on only facilitate the accreditation of these people who managed to submit their applications on time,” read the statement.
In Bulawayo yesterday, more than 5 000 polling officers were deployed to the city’s 392 polling stations.
Polling officers yesterday collected material that would be used at the polls to choose a President, National Assembly members and local authority representatives from Donnington Police Station.
The officers collected ink, ballot papers, numbered strips to seal ballot boxes and other material needed for the election.
In an interview yesterday, Bulawayo Provincial Elections Officer, Mr Innocent Ncube, said the number of people deployed by Zec excluded police officers.
He said individual polling stations would today be collecting material from constitutional command centres and would carry out rehearsals for the polls at the stations.
According to the amended Electoral Act, each of the Presidential candidates is limited to three polling agents.
One would be inside the polling station while the other two would be outside for relief purposes.
In respect of political parties fielding both a council and National Assembly candidate, they will be allowed three election agents, one inside and two others outside.
There will also be roving election agents who would supplement the functions of chief election agents and they can hop from one polling station to another in order to confer with the party’s election agent at a polling station to acquaint with any problems that may be reported to him or her.
The other key stakeholders have also confirmed their readiness with the Zimbabwe Republic Police deploying police officers to polling stations over the weekend to maintain peace and order.
According to the law, political parties are expected to wind up their campaigns today as no one would be allowed to do so from midnight today.
Results for council elections are likely to be announced on the polling day by the commander of the polling ward as some councils have few wards.
Poll outcome for smaller National Assembly constituencies can be expected a day after the election.
Presidential election results are expected within five days as prescribed by the law and no one other than the Zec chief elections officer should announce the results.
Online Reporter