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political analysts said yesterday.
The electoral commission is a Constitutional body that was set up with input from all three main political parties in Government who recommended commissioners and agreed on the commission chairperson.

Despite this, the MDC-T leadership have been on a campaign to discredit ZEC as part of their campaign to trash the electoral environment creating the impression that the Commission reports to Zanu-PF.

ZEC has challenged the MDC-T and all who claim the voters roll was manipulated to avail the evidence; the MDC-T was still to meet the challenge.
The analysts yesterday said the claims by the MDC-T were inflammatory as they were designed to incite supporters to violence before and after the polls.
The MDC-T has accused ZEC of manipulating the voters’ roll in a bid to favour Zanu-PF, claiming that two million potential voters aged under 30 years are unregistered while over one million people on the voters’ roll are either dead or migrated.

Statements that have since been disproved by statistics released by the Registrar General of Voters Office  which shows that 94 percent of eligible voters are registered to vote putting Zimbabwe third out of 10 countries in Sadc that held elections since 2009.

The RG’s office, earlier this year, also removed over one million people who died between 1985 and May 1 this year from the voters roll.
Mr Terrence Hussein of Hussein, Ranchhod and Company said any allegations of rigging should be supported by evidence in the court of law. He said the fact that the MDC-T had no evidence meant they were politicking.

“Such utterances are common from people who are not sure of themselves,” he said. “There is no reason to pre-judge the elections unless one has concrete evidence. With that evidence in hand one can quickly approach the court and present it then the law will act accordingly. Just utterances without doing anything means these are just political tricks.”

Mr Jonathan Samkange of Venturas and Samkange law firm said a person could be sued if he accuses anyone without evidence.
“They have got a democratic right to say whatever they want but that should be supported with evidence. At the moment ZEC, being an independent body is handicapped because if it responds it can be viewed as taking a side. However, after the elections they can take whoever would have accused them of rigging to court, requesting proof that they indeed rigged.”

Political scientist and Zanu-PF Politburo member Professor Jonathan Moyo said it was illegal for the MDC-T to accuse ZEC without proffering any evidence.
“ZEC is not a statutory body under any ministry and it is a creation of the Constitution of Zimbabwe and for the MDC-T to keep on insisting that they are rigging elections is illegal,” he said.

“They are doing this without any evidence. Figures have shown that there are 6,7 million people eligible to vote and 6,4 million of these have registered to vote and where is this phantom two million coming from?”

Prof Moyo said Mr Tsvangirai and his officials should not be allowed to make such statements that had a potential to cause public disorder.
“ZEC must make a statement on that because they are the only authority that can rein in Tsvangirai,” he said.

“There is a need to deal with him before the election results come out. This is a matter that calls for action from ZEC and law enforcement agents. These are words coming from the Prime Minister of a country who has access to ZEC where he can bring to attention his concerns instead of using the public gallery.”

He said the peace obtaining in the country had made life difficult for the MDC-T ahead of the July 31 polls.
“They thrive on violence and now there is no violence or signs of it, they are resorting to false and inflammatory allegations,” Prof Moyo said.

“Instead of preaching peace, he is now inciting people to prepare for violence in the event that he loses the elections, as widely projected. Luckily there are observers on the ground hearing all these unfounded allegations.”

The MDC-T is basing the irregularities on a research purportedly carried by the Research Advocacy Unit, a non-governmental organisations which claimed that 92 percent of the rural population registered as voters in the coming elections while other urban centres had 78 percent registered. Harare, RAU claimed that only 38 percent had registered. MDC-T is parroting the figures in a bid to pre-empt the election results and discredit the polls.

Contrary to their claims, latest figures released by Registrar General of Voters Tobaiwa Mudede yesterday showed that Zimbabwe now has over 6,4 million registered voters against an eligible voting population of 6,7 million.