ZEC proposes amendments to Electoral Act

THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has proposed a number of amendments to the Electoral Act that will be tabled before Parliament when it resumes debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill next week.

The Bill is currently before Parliament and is at the Second Reading stage.

ZEC chairperson Justice Priscilla Chigumba revealed the pending amendments to the Electoral Act while addressing diplomats accredited to Zimbabwe yesterday.

She said the proposed amendments emanated from the need to align issues on voter registration with the Constitution and issues that have been brought about by the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) process.

“Some of the issues are the amendment of section 22A of the Electoral Act to allow ZEC to establish more polling stations in an area that has a large voter population,” she said.

“In our view, this will speed up polling on the actual voting day.”

Justice Chigumba said ZEC wanted the law to close voter registration when proclamation of elections is made by the President.

“The other amendment is 26A of the Electoral Act on the closure of the voters’ roll so that the voters’ roll is closed on the proclamation day as opposed to the 12 days after nomination day,” he said.

“This will allow the Commission to finalise the voters’ roll in readiness for nomination day. We propose amendments of Section 49 of the Electoral Act on the withdrawal of candidates to provide a cut-off time when a candidate can withdraw his or her candidacy.

“Late withdrawals have a logistic and financial impact for the Commission as the law mandates the Commission to delete from the ballot paper the name of any candidate who withdraws when such withdrawal has been made after the ballot paper has already been printed.”

Justice Chigumba said they wanted Section 59 of the Electoral Act on assisted voters to be amended to allow visually-impaired voters to

be assisted by a person of their choice without the presiding officer necessarily being present. She reiterated ZEC’s commitment to holding peaceful, free and credible elections, adding that multi-party liaison committees would be set up for dispute resolution.

“On conflict management and in line with the provisions of our law, the commission will set up multi-party liaison committees in the various committees and wards,” said Justice Chigumba.

“A national multi-party liaison committee will also be set up for the Presidential election. The purpose of these committees is to deal with disputes that may arise during the electoral process.

“ZEC’s clarion call had been to discourage politically motivated violence and encourage tolerance and respect for the diverse views of the country.”

Latest statistics from ZEC show that 54,5 percent of all registered voters are women, with Harare recording the highest percentage of registrants at 14,4 percent of the total followed by Midlands with 13,8 percent, Manicaland 12,6 percent, Mashonaland West 11,6 percent, Masvingo 10,4 percent, Mashonaland East 10,2 percent and Matabeleland North 6,2 percent.

The lowest proportion of registered voters were in with Bulawayo with 4,1 percent of the total, followed by Matabeleland South with 4,8 percent.