Last week Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede said more than 400,000 new voters had registered for the elections since the mobile registration exercise kicked off on June 10th.
The new registrants brought to about 6.1 million the total number of registered voters, and the figure is set to increase once the RG adds up the number of voters who registered in the last week.
The mandatory 30-day registration was however marred by Mudede’s decision to cut down the number of ward level voter registration days from 30 to 3, citing financial constraints. Existing voters also used the exercise to inspect the voters’ roll to verify if they are still registered in their wards.
Abel Chikomo, the Executive Director of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, told SW Radio Africa that a number of people have been disenfranchised by Mudede’s unilateral initiative to cut down the number of days for the exercise.
Observers and other political parties have accused Mudede’s office of poor planning and poor organization for the shambolic way the voter registration exercise was carried out.
‘Very many people have come to register in their wards, but have been hugely disappointed because of the long queues and the slow process of the exercise,’ said Chikomo.
As such, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is now under pressure to extend the registration deadline by a few more days.
‘We have thousands of people who have tried to utilise the remaining period to be registered as voters but have failed. ZEC is aware of this and it is in their interest now as an independent body to make the right call,’ Chikomo added.
A journalist with The Mirror in Masvingo, Leopold Munhende, was arrested by police on Tuesday while taking photographs of the voter registration process at the Registrar General’s offices in the town.
The arrest comes at a time when thousands of people are making a last minute dash to register before the lapse of the deadline. MISA Zimbabwe, a media watchdog, said Munhende was arrested in the morning and taken to the central police station where he was allegedly charged with being a public nuisance.
Meanwhile, in Bulawayo, thousands more failed to register on the last day, blaming officials manning the centres for their predicaments. Our correspondent Lionel Saungweme told us many new and young voters complained that they couldn’t register and that would mean they would not be able to vote for the people they want as their next leaders. – SW Radio Africa News
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