The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) wants the Electoral Act to be amended so that it becomes a requirement for political parties to be registered to make them accountable when they misbehave.
Currently, political parties are not registered and only need to inform ZEC of their existence.
In an interview with ZBC News on the sidelines of a public lecture at the Zimbabwe National Defence University in Harare on Wednesday, ZEC Chairperson, Justice Priscilla Chigumba said:
There is a need to amend our electoral laws because there are gaps. We appreciate that there is a draft bill that seeks to address these gaps, but it will be a good step if all of our recommendations were taken on board.
There is a need to register political parties because then they will be accountable if they misbehave.
Chigumba said there won’t be gerrymandering during the constituency boundary delimitation exercise that will be conducted after the census but before the 2023 general elections. She said:
This is our first delimitation after the 2013 Constitution. So this exercise is important because it will determine the constituencies and wards.
At times we are accused of gerrymandering because the public does not understand the process, but everything is going to be done within the boundaries of the law.
Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing the boundaries of constituencies in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage over its rivals or that dilutes the voting power of members of ethnic or linguistic minority groups.