Political Will Needed For Electoral Law Reforms

Speaking to RadioVOP during an interview in Harare Chipfunde-Vava said the failure by the Global Political Agreement to give clear timelines in addressing the electoral reforms was worrying.

“The GPA does not talk of the next election date and how long the inclusive government will be in effect. It is also silent on the date for the referendum and because of this we are likely going to encounter the same problems as we had in 2008,” said Chipfunde-Vava.

She said the electoral environment in Zimbabwe was “still bad” and the sooner the issues were addressed the better.

“It’s self defeating when all the electoral, media, Constitutional reforms are not taken seriously. We have had electoral commissions running the country’s elections just a few months after being formed.

In the 2005 and 2008 elections, the commissions were set up less than four months before the elections and that was after some constitutional amendments and it has proved to be disastrous,” she added.

Chipfunde-Vava said the inclusive government which was “set up as a result of a fraudulent election” has been moving “very slowly” to address all the electoral challenges.

“We have constituencies that have gone for months without representatives as a result of the political agreement. There are MPs who have died and no by-elections have been held. We need a revamp of the whole electoral system in this country,” explained Chipfunde-Vava.
She said the independent commissions should be established in time to ensure that they “clearly understand” their mandates before an election.
“Establishing an independent commission before any election will not serve anything,” she said.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is yet to call for by-elections for seats that fell vacant after the election of Lovemore Moyo and Edna Madzongwe to Speaker of Parliament and President of the Senate respectively.
There are four vacant constituency seats in the House of Assembly and three in the Senate. All these vacancies have to be filled.

As all the vacancies occurred before the end of last year, the by-elections are now long overdue. Under the Electoral Act the presidential proclamations calling the by-elections should have been gazetted within fourteen days after Parliament notified the President of the vacancies and correctly that notification should have been given immediately each seat fell vacant.

The vacancies are from Gokwe-Gumunyu, Bindura North and Guruve North resulting from the death of the ZANU-PF incumbents in the House of Assembly.The other two are from Chiredzi and Gokwe South and these are seats vacated by Titus Maluleke and Jaison Machaya on appointment as a Provincial Governor for Masvingo and Midlands respectively.