Tens of thousands in the urban areas helplessly watched the registration process come to an end while holding places in the slow queues or still struggling to acquire national registration documents.
CSOs described the chaotic voter registration process as a serious national issue needing urgent corrective measures. NANGO spokesperson Michael Mabwe said more than 10,000 potential voters could have been denied the opportunity to exercise their voting right.
The fact that most of them were from urban areas raised suspicions that it was a deliberate effort by some people to disenfranchise the urban voters. There was little hope that ZEC would extend the period, as its chairperson Rita Makarau recently said there would not be any such extension.
Election Resource Centre director, Tawanda Chiminhi, said in a recent statement: “Though the process managed to register big numbers of new voters, it left out thousands of others as revealed by hordes of people turned away on closing day.”
He said it was unfortunate that ZEC had refused to accredit CSOs to do voter education, as this left the electorate uninformed about the voter registration process, and contributed to the long queues.
“What would have made sense for a Commission without money was to sub-contract the process, especially given that CSOs have structures in the communities,” said Chimhini.
MDC-T took the issue of the protested voter registration process to SADC for corrective measures.
Post published in: News