Election watchdogs have expressed concern over the failure of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to publicise the voters’ roll ahead of the delimitation exercise.
Election Resource Centre (ERC) programmes manager Solomon Bobosibunu said the laws of the land required ZEC to make the voters’ roll public before embarking on the delimitation exercise. NewsDay cites Bobosibunu as saying:
In as far as voter education is concerned we are still worried that Zec has not made the voters roll public as the requirement of the law. We are not asking this out of the blue, it’s as per the provisions of the Electoral Act.
Zimbabwe Election Support Network acting executive director Ellen Dingani said while the delimitation exercise is good, ZEC needs to engage the civil society and political parties.
Zimbabwe Elections Advocacy Trust director Ignatius Sadziwa echoed Dingani’s remarks urging ZEC to be transparent and improve on consultations so that the process passes credibility and legitimacy tests.
ZEC Thursday released its delimitation roadmap showing that the exercise will be completed by December ahead of the 2023 elections.
In the roadmap, ZEC said it would use provincial and district maps with topological features such as mountains, rivers, roads, communication lines, settlements and different types of land use to demarcate constituency boundaries.