ll have to skip from one constituent to another after the Delimitation Commission increases the number of contested constituencies to 200 up from 120 as is being proposed in the gazetted Constitutional Amendment (no. 18) bill, which soon to be tabled in Parliament.
Political analyst and University of Zimbabwe lecturer Professor Eldred Masunungure said given the limited time left before the elections, the only logical thing to do was to postpone the elections.
“There is going to be an artificial voter apathy as most people are going to be disenfranchised after the delimitation of constituencies. Most people would not be able to check their new constituencies and in the end they get disillusioned and frustrated. A sizeable number of eligible voters are going to be turned away after turning up in wrong constituencies,” said Masunungure.
He said the Zimabwe Election Commission (ZEC) has not done enough about publicizing their activities.
“ZEC is being negligent. It’s not doing its constitutional job. We now have less than six months before the local council elections are held and I believe more time should have been devoted to the voter registration process since the delimitation of constituencies is primarily based on the number of registered voters,” said Masunungure.
Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) chairperson Noel Kututwa said the organisation has snce writeen to ZEC calling for the extension of the mobile voter registration exercise.
“The whole process was not published enough aand we also believe that the time allocated is not enough to cover the whole country. At most of the polling stations we monitored, the officers were only registering 100 people,” said Kututwa.
Gabriel Chaibva the spokesperson of the opposition MDC led by Arthur Mutambara said the party does not believe in piece-meal changes to the Constitution but through a people-driven process.
The Registrar General’s office is continuing to register voter until 17 August.
11.8.2007
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Voter apathy expected due to new constituencies to be introduced (11-08-07)
OWN CORRESPONDENT
MANY people are going to be disenfranchised after the delimitation exercise which seeks to introduce 80 more new constituencies in next year’s general and presidential elections leading to massive voter apathy, analysts have said.
They said voters wi
MANY people are going to be disenfranchised after the delimitation exercise which seeks to introduce 80 more new constituencies in next year’s general and presidential elections leading to massive voter apathy, analysts have said.
They said voters wi