The Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) candidate for Mabvuku-Tafara in the 09 December 2023 by-elections, Munyaradzi Kufahakutizwi has approached the High Court seeking to compel the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to give him a polling station-based voters’ roll for the constituency.
This was confirmed by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) in a statement posted on X. It said:
At Harare High Court, we have challenged ZEC’s refusal to furnish Mabvuku-Tafara parliamentary candidate Munyaradzi Kufahakutizwi for next month’s by-elections, with a polling station-based voters’ roll.
In an urgent court application filed by our lawyer Obey Shava, we asked the High Court to compel ZEC to release and hand over the voters’ roll to Kufahakutizwi within 48 hours.
Our court challenge came after numerous attempts seeking the release of the voters’ roll by Kufahakutizwi, one of the participating candidates in next month’s by-elections, were turned down by ZEC.
By-elections will be held in Beitbridge West, Binga North, Bulawayo South, Cowdray Park, Lobengula-Magwegwe, Lupane East, Mabvuku-Tafara, Mpopoma-Mzilikazi and Nketa constituencies.
CCC won all the nine constituencies in the 23-24 August 2023 general elections. But in October, CCC activist Sengezo Tshabangu recalled the legislators after declaring himself the party’s interim secretary general.
Tshabangu subsequently recalled more MPs and councillors and the number of CCC representatives he has recalled to date stands at 27 MPs, 14 senators, and 69 councillors.
Meanwhile, Tshabangu has since filed an urgent High Court application seeking to bar recalled CCC legislators and councillors who successfully filed their nomination papers to contest in the 09 December by-elections.
Tshabangu, through his lawyer Advocate Lewis Uriri, argued that the recalled CCC members had ceased to be members of CCC and therefore could not represent the same party in the by-elections.
However, in July 2023, the High Court dismissed an appeal by CCC against forty-one (41) individuals who fraudulently filed nomination papers as members of the party.
The CCC claimed that 20 of the “fraudsters” filed nomination papers for National Assembly seats while the other 21 individuals filed for local authority seats.
High Court Judge Justice Neville Wamambo dismissed the appeal application saying the papers had nothing suspicious.
More: Pindula News