Mudede’s advance rigging plans condemned (15-06-07)

Harare - Zimbabwe's electoral authorities have come under fire for practices that the opposition and an observer group claim could be used to rig the ballot, a day after Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede announced he was starting registration of voters and inspection of the voters roll fort next year

’s key joint parliamentary and presidential elections.
Mudede announced yesterday that nationwide mobile registration exercise would start next Monday. Mudede told a press briefing in Harare that his office would be issuing birth and death certificates during the exercise. He said anyone above 18 was free to vote.
He said those who lost their citizenship by default when they failed to renounce their foreign identity in the stipulated one year in 2001 when the citizenship act was amended to prohibit non-Zimbabweans from voting will regain their citizenship.
Inspection of the voters roll was also underway.
“In order to be registered as a voter a national identity card or valid Zimbabwe passport and proof of residence are required, but a driver’s license is not acceptable,” said Muded.
To get access to inspect the voter’s roll one has to produce a valid Zimbabwean passport or a national identity card. A driver’s license is again not acceptable.
But opposition groups cited as reasons for concern unmonitored voting by soldiers, the influence of traditional chiefs on voting.
“There will be all sorts of tricks in this election if the past election is anything to go by,” said David Coltart, legal director of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
Officials of the MDC have confirmed that more incidents of violence have been reported in the run-up to this election. Critics it will get worse as we approach the election and that Mugabe will cheat in other ways.
Electoral authorities are appointed by Mugabe, and soldiers are among staff running polling stations.
Soldiers, police and prison officers are allowed to cast postal votes ahead of elections when they are based outside their constituencies. But Zimbabweans in the diaspora do not have this right.
Judge George Chiweshe, chairman of the state-run Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, said the “the postal ballots have already been concluded”.
According to Zimbabwean law, the uniformed services need only to be monitored by “a competent witness”. There is no provision for independent observers or election agents to observe.
“There is a high possibility the secrecy of the vote has been compromised and we are closely following that,” said MDC spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi.
“If there are any anomalies, we want that vote discounted.”
Registrar-general Tobaiwa Mudede said registration was “continuous and that those being registered now would not be allowed to vote “.


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