According to documentary evidence presented to journalists on Monday by the party’s national spokesperson, Douglas Mwonzora, urban constituency voters’ rolls are being stuffed with mysterious names.
Mudede is allegedly compiling two separate voters’ rolls in an attempt to disenfranchise suspected Zanu (PF) rivals in both urban and rural areas. In some cases, steep rises have been recorded in certain constituencies, raising suspicion that the rolls are being tampered with.
Mwonzora said two conflicting voters’ rolls showed that, in Harare North’s Ward 42 some 5,196 people were on the 94-page roll on 15 April 2013, but two days later there were 17,068 voters and the roll had grown to 310 pages – suggesting 11,872 people had registered in just two days.
The same pattern of election rigging by way of stuffing the voters roll with ghost voters and people from outside constituencies was exposed in Harare North’s Ward 18, where on 17 April 2013 the voters roll had 8,305 registered voters. Two days later this figure rose to 10,076.
Mwonzora told journalists that the trends they had unearthed showed that major schemes were being implemented to rig the next election.
“The scandal is one issue SADC should be seized with as it exposes Mudede and Zanu (PF)’s unholy alliance to rig the coming election,” he said, adding that his party would take the issue up with SADC, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Registrar General’s office.
He accused Mudede of playing games with voters, and said the MDC would demand transparent voter verification. Mwonzora said Mudede’s office was deliberately registering people with spelling mistakes in the names, or placing voters in the wrong constituencies to cause confusion and prevent them from voting.
The RG’s office has been widely criticised for defying cabinet instruction to facilitate replacement of lost identification particulars without charging a fee, in addition to frustrating mobile voter registration and illegally charging aliens $40 as a voter registration fee.
Post published in: News