There are concerns that this would be in violation of the constitution.
Giving oral evidence to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence and Home Affairs on Monday, Mudede said the ward level mobile registration as provided for by the constitution was impossible due to lack of adequate funding.
Without notifying cabinet and the relevant parliamentary committee about the challenges faced, Mudede’s office improvised old photographic equipment and disregarded constitutional provisions requiring that the ongoing mobile voter registration be conducted for 30 days in each ward.
“Given limited financial resources, I had to play around with what was availed to me and decided to station voter registration teams for only three days in each ward before relocating them elsewhere,” said Mudede.
He said his office was promised $4.4 million by Treasury to kick start the mobile voter registration, but nothing had come out of the arrangement. Another $5 million would be dispatched later.
Despite claiming that he was disturbed by poor funding for the exercise, Mudede said his office was equal to the task.
Besides allocating only three days to each ward against provisions of the constitution, Mudede said in urban areas, a mobile voter registration team will be based at a central point to a number of grouped wards.
Mudede said if the cutting down of voter registration days was in violation of the constitution, the one responsible for allocation of government funds would be the culprit.
The Chairperson for the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee for Defence and Home Affairs, Paul Madzore, warned Mudede that lack of resources would not justify the breach of constitution provision on voter registration period.
“RG, you could be behaving unconstitutionally by manipulating provisions of the constitution because the voter registration is underfunded,” said Madzore.
MDC-T MP for Silobela, Anadi Arnold Sululu quizzed Mudede about the criteria used to clean the voters’ roll of dead people.
Mudede said his staff consulted the traditional leadership such as chiefs and headmen from 2010-2012, who provided statistics and information about people who passed away in their areas of jurisdiction.
“The method used to clean the voters’ roll in this regard was not effective enough. It is families which lost relatives which have reliable information, not the traditional leadership,” Sululu told Mudede.
Sululu said he would produce documentary evidence of dead people still appearing on the voters’ roll to the RG’s office and expose gaps in Mudede’s activities.
Mudede said there was no way anyone could remove someone from a voters’ roll without authentic proof of death.
He said his office was unfairly accused of compiling a defective voters’ roll, given that there was no country with a perfect document in this respect.
The Portfolio Committee will visit some mobile voter registration centres to assess the exercise and report to parliament accordingly.
The committee will gather oral evidence from potential voters on the ground regarding challenges being faced and come up with an informed update on the preparedness of the RG’s office to conduct voter registration.
Some 5, 8 million people had registered as voters at the end of the past voter registration conducted from April 29 to May 19.
Zimbabwe has 1, 958 electoral wards, 62 political districts and four voter registration teams were deployed per district. According to Mudede, the previous voter registration exercise had one team per district.
Failure by the voter registration teams to reach all wards was blamed on inadequate resources ‘since each district had only one vehicle’.
The RG’s office said some people were not aware of the registration programme, since ZEC had not conducted enough voter education due to logistical problems.
The media was partly blamed for failure to inform potential voters about the voter registration.
For the current exercise, the RG’s office and ZEC have deployed voter educators and registering officers across the country for the 30 day exercise. The voter registration and inspection will run concurrently.
There are fears that given the ‘modifications’ done by Mudede to the mobile voter registration, thousands of potential voters might be disenfranchised.
Observers said Mudede’s admission that his office was cutting corners to carry out the mobile voter registration, was confirmation enough that Zimbabwe was not ready for credible elections.
Post published in: News
Zimbabweans do not realise that JOC planned to disenfranchise voters through Tobaiwa Mudede. They planned to win a violence free election through the voters’ roll using Mudede. That is why ghost voters will be registered in thousands where rigging is planned. Real voters in urban areas will be registered at a pace of one voter per hour. This will also be the pace for the actual poll. This will effectively mean urban voetrs will be weeded out of the voters roll and then those few who register will find that their voting ques wont move on polling day while carefuuly selected ZANU-PF voters who will have been registered in massive numbers will be entered into polling booths via the backdoor by CIO agents and vote speedily while everyone else waits in the long slow ques. That is why Mudede changes the way things would have been agreed, He is simply sticking to the original plan the JOC and Mugabe carefully laid out. No amount of calling for new registration days will change that plan. They will pretend to go along but when reality comes they stick with their original plan. That is why they are confident of winning the next election because they have done their home work. They have played to win through the voters’ roll. They will preach peace this time because they believe their voters’ roll plan is water tight and so far Mudede is proof as he is sticking to the plan.
Unfortunately Tsvangirai trusts his popularity but does not realise that the only numbers that matter are those on the register and then finally those that actually vote on the polling day. This is where ZANU-PF has concentrated their effort this time. The opposition will just come out as cry babies this time because they have legitimised the rigging via the voters’ roll by going through the motions of correcting it according to ZANU-PF’s script. When they lose no one will sympathise with them.