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Fidelis Munyoro Chief Court Reporter
POLICE will not supervise the running of the voting process in this year’s harmonised elections but will be restricted to their constitutional mandate to maintain law and order at designated voting centres, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairwoman Justice Priscilla Chigumba has said.

Addressing police’s 2018 Harmonised Elections Train-the-Trainer Workshop at Morris Depot today, Justice Chigumba said involving police officers in overseeing the voting process gives a wrong impression on the credibility of the elections.

“We cannot afford to have this happen during the 2018 harmonised elections because it sends the wrong signal to the observers as it undermines the independence of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission,” said Justice Chigumba.

She said reports from previous elections pointed to a hostile relationship between the commission and police as the former felt as “if the latter was there to oversee the running of the elections”.

She also made reference to reports of police officers who were openly demanding electoral statistics from polling officers which they then radioed in full glare of the public and observers to unknown destinations.

“We do not know where these statistics were being channelled to but we know they were not being sent through ZEC structures. Such behaviour has thus created an impression that ZEC and the ZRP are devious players in the electoral field,” said Justice Chigumba.

More to follow…