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Farirai Machivenyika

Senior Reporter

President Mnangagwa is today expected to hand over to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), a report by Parliament on the preliminary Delimitation report of electoral ward and constituency boundaries produced by the elections management body last month.

Speaker of Parliament Advocate Jacob Mudenda yesterday handed over the report to the President at State House for onward submission to ZEC as required by law.

The hand over was witnessed by the Deputy President of Senate, Lieutenant General Mike Nyambuya (Retired), Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi and Acting Clerk of Parliament Ms Hellen Dingane.

The report by Parliament was produced from the report by the ad hoc committee it constituted from all political parties in the august House, to analyse ZEC’s preliminary report.

It also contains  concerns raised by legislators during debate on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In his remarks after receiving the report, President Mnangagwa said he would hand it over to ZEC today.

“I must hand over this report to ZEC within 14 days (from the date it was submitted to Parliament) and the 14th day is tomorrow, so I will hand over the report to ZEC,” he said.

The report was tabled in Parliament on January 6.

Speaking to journalists, Advocate Mudenda said: “As was indicated by His Excellency the President, he said he will hand it over to ZEC tomorrow (today) so that the constitutional processes as laid out in Section 161 of the Constitution are complied with.

“Once they receive the report from Parliament, ZEC will, hopefully, consider it, digest it and then after that they will produce the final report which they will hand over to His Excellency the President and thereafter, after 14 days of that hand over, His Excellency will gazette the final report as required by the Constitution,” said Advocate Mudenda.

President Mnangagwa

He also said Parliament had thoroughly scrutinised the preliminary delimitation report by ZEC.

“The debate was quite robust, we had an ad-hoc committee selected from both Houses and this committee did an excellent piece of work by coming up with a critical analysis and recommendations arising from their digestion of ZEC’s preliminary delimitation report.

“And that ad-hoc committee report was tabled in both Houses, debated on January 18 in the Senate and they adopted the report, whereas in the National Assembly

they continued debate on the following day and finally also adopted the report of the ad-hoc committee as the report of the Parliament of Zimbabwe,” he added.

In the report, the ad-hoc committee said ZEC failed to follow procedures that include delimiting some ward boundaries below the maximum and minimum thresholds as stipulated by the Constitution and also noted that it did not provide sufficient information to justify the changes in ward and constituency boundaries it made.

Parliamentarians that contributed to the debate echoed similar sentiments raised by the ad-hoc committee citing situations that occurred in their respective constituencies and recommended that ZEC consider their concerns when coming up with the final report.