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Zvamaida Murwira

Senior Reporter

Parliament now wants constitutional amendments to rationalise roles for Government agencies carrying out elections like establishment of a delimitation commission and a registrar of voters so that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission focus mainly on administering elections, but these amendments will have to wait for the new Parliament to be elected in August.

During debate on proposed amendments to the Electoral Act last week, legislators went beyond the actual proposed amendments and looked at the general electoral laws. 

There was a strong feeling, initiated by opposition MPs but backed by Zanu PF members, that the Registrar General should automatically register those seeking national identity documents as voters if they were 18 or above, rather than make them go through the process twice.

It was also felt that a special independent delimitation commission should be created when needed, divorced from the electoral body. Both proposals require constitutional amendments and both would return voter registration and the 10-year delimitation to the position before the present Constitution was enacted.

It was explained during debate that the present constitutional processes were brought in because then opposition parties were extremely districtful of the then long-serving Registrar General, Tobaiwa Mudede, and wbnated ZEC to assume the role.

 This came out during debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill in the National Assembly where the opposition CCC made an array of suggested amendments to the Bill, gaining support from the Government side of the House.

Kuwadzana MP, Mr Charlton Hwende had proposed that the RG’s office and ZEC has an electronic biometric voter registration which ensured automatic registration of those that would have attained 18 years when they take national identity cards. 

Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said while he concurred with some of the proposed amendments like allowing the Registrar General’s office to register voters as what used to be the case that could not immediately be implemented as it would require amendment to the Constitution.

“What is needed is to ensure that after the elections, we amend the Constitution so that we remove the function of registering voters and we leave the independent electoral body with the core function of running elections. Then the Registrar General will now do exactly what is being suggested, when I turn 18, I automatically I get a notification and I am a registered voter. 

“When I am deceased, automatically the system will remove me from both the vital registration system and from the voters’ roll. Some of the arguments that they are putting forward are very valid, but they are not for now,” said Minister Ziyambi.

“We need now to go and amend the Constitution and clean it up so that we have separate roles for those that will be doing the job of elections. Even the delimitation process, we do not need a hangover for the commission to be involved in delimitation. They have fights with everyone else and that is carried over to an election. 

“The way it was – we had a Delimitation Commission which was divorced from the electoral body makes the situation even tidier. I submit that we do not need this for now and I am moving that we remove it and keep it in our minds for when we have the next Session of Parliament.”

ZEC assumed the role of registering voters in 2013 during the inclusive Government after the then opposition MDC-T expressed misgivings against Mr Mudede.

Parliament noted that this position created a lot of red tape through duplication of duties.

The present system was untenable given that ZEC was relying heavily on the RG’s office regarding information and birth and death registration data, when it wants to update the voters roll.

Minister Ziyambi however shot down proposed amendments to have election observers be accredited six months before elections.

“What it means is that we will have people who will camp in this country six months before elections pretending to be observers: in the mean time they can do anything. When the election is called after a proclamation then they can come but before proclamation, you end up with people saying we want to be in your country six months before election and six months after an election because there is a pre-election and post-election period,” he said.

The National Assembly also shot down proposal by Mutare Central MP, Mr Innocent Gonese to subject printing of ballot papers to procurement regulations as it was felt that it was security issue.

He said political parties have always been allowed to participate particularly through their agents when election material have been dispatched at polling stations.

The Bill has since been referred to Parliamentary Legal Committee for it to ascertain whether the amendments that were adopted were consistent with the Constitution.