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Lovemore Zigara Midlands Correspondent
ZIMBABWE has made significant progress through economic, political and electoral reforms since President Mnangagwa took over the Presidency in November last year.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a civil society meeting in Gweru yesterday, European Union (EU) Ambassador to Zimbabwe Mr Philippe Van Damme said it was understandable that all reforms could not be achieved within 100 days that the President has been in office.

At his maiden Cabinet meeting on December 5 last year, President Mnangagwa set priority quick-win 100-day targets for ministers to kick-start the country’s economic recovery process.

The 100-day target became the administration’s management tool to keep ministers on their toes in a bid to get them to think outside the box and come up with priority projects whose impact should be felt in the shortest possible time.

Among President Mnangagwa’s achievements during his first 100 days in office is opening the economy to investment, improving the ease of doing business, giving security of tenure to all farmers, facilitating national healing and reconciliation as well as reforming the police force.

“There have been positives to issues to do with reforms in this new dispensation but we must note that everything cannot be achieved within the 100 days the President enunciated on his inauguration,” he said.

“In terms of commitment we have had all kind of positives like issues to do with economic reforms, political reforms and electoral reforms in general.

“What needs to be done is to translate all these commitments to deliverables. Of course, we cannot achieve everything within 100 days in these deliverables. It can’t happen nowhere in the world but of course you have to make steps in that direction.”

Mr Van Damme said there had been significant progress in as far as electoral reforms are concerned with the major achievement being the success of the Biometric Voter registration exercise.

“On preparation for the elections, the calendar is tight so a lot of things still need to be done but there has been quite some progress. If 18 months ago people would say we would have a new Bio-metric Voters Roll of 5, 3 million people including 60 percent of those registered younger than 40 nobody would have taken it seriously,” he said.

“Through our support through a basket fund which is managed by UNDP which works with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, we have achieved something which has a solid basis for confidence building during the electoral process so there has been some progress,” he said.