The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) said there was no law prohibiting the elections management body from being run by the military.
These were the remarks of ZEC spokesperson Jasper Mangwana in response to a question on the militarisation of ZEC by Gweru legislator Brian Dube at a Twitter Spaces event organised by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) on Monday evening. Mangwana said:
You talk about the militarisation of the commission, I will ask a very simple question: Do we have a legal and provisional framework on recruitment of former serving officers?
Can you make it into law that if someone applies at ZEC and wants a job and is a former Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Service (ZPCS) employee, even if he has the qualifications to be a driver or maybe a clerk in the commission, the commission must not consider them because for us to act without the law it means we are going to be infringing other people’s rights.
I do not think it’s going to be fair simply to say you once worked at ZRP (Zimbabwe Republic Police), you have the qualifications, but you cannot work at the commission. But what you should take us to account about is to say there is an officer in the commission who did not follow procedure and here is the procedure was not followed
NewsDay reports that opposition parties, however, insisted that military personnel must not be part of ZEC.
Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) interim deputy secretary for elections Ellen Shiriyedenga said they were sceptical about the former military personnel’s impartiality or neutrality. Shiriyedenga said:
The military code is you do not resign. If a crisis arises you are always called for duty despite resigning. Hence this can only mean they are there to serve a purpose.
MDC Alliance director of information Chengeto Guta said military personnel are not necessarily supposed to be disallowed to participate in government.
Guta added that there are countless constitutional breaches at ZEC and also at every other State enterprise.
In 2018, ZEC chairperson, Justice Priscilla Chigumba, disclosed that at least 15% of the elections administrator’s staff, then over 380, were ex-service personnel.
The military and other security agencies in the country are being accused of being or acting as “an extension” of the ruling ZANU PF.