Few people in the urban areas were aware of the exercise and believe it to be part of a wider plan by the ruling party to disenfranchise millions of potential voters. Civic groups said the mobile voter registration blitz was concentrated on the resettlement areas and occupied farms – the bastions of government power. There was very little of the exercise going on in urban areas where the opposition derives most of its support.
The Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust sees this move as an attempt by government to rig the election.
David Chimhini, the Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust (Zimcet) executive director, said government was attempting to disenfranchise those perceived to be sympathetic to the opposition.
Said Chimhini: It is public knowledge that the exercise was concentrated around the farms. The system has been designed to rig elections.
An independent poll monitoring group, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, in a report issued Wednesday said: “The exercise was hampered by poor publicity and several logistical shortcomings.
The report stated that the exercise was disrupted by frequent power cuts, shortage of registration forms and photographic films, traditional leaders facilitating registration of their subjects and some registration officials demanding bribes from poor peasants.
The Registrar of Voters, Tobaiwa Mudede, refuted allegations that the mop-up mobile voter registration exercise was meant to facilitate rigging. He described allegations that his office was being used to steal the vote as news to my ears.
If there is anybody who has been denied registration because of his political party affiliation, we would be interested to know their details, Mudede said. Members of Parliament, in addition to the local leadership, were advised about the exercise and asked to mobilise the people to take advantage and register as voters.
The ZESN report said there was little enthusiasm in the people to register as voters as most of them appeared content only to get ID cards.
The publicity campaign conducted mainly through school children mostly concentrated on informing the people of the issuing of ID cards and birth certificates than on the registration of voters, said the report.
A rural opposition MP, Giles Mutsekwa, who represents Mutare North, said he had received over 500 complains from supporters who had been frustrated by officials conducting the exercise.
The exercise was concentrated on the occupied farms. What we witnessed was a situation where very few people registered to vote, Mutsekwa said. You must remember that Zanu (PF) starts rigging the election from registration and this is part of that process.
MDC (Tsvangirai) elections secretary Ian Makone said what government had done amounted to “electoral fraud.”
Paul Themba-Nyathi, elections secretary of the Arthur Mutambara-led MDC described the whole exercise as a sham and called on a truly independent electoral commission to conduct a transparent voter registration exercise.
Post published in: News