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Columbus Mabika Herald Reporter

THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) wants objective reviews from seconded staff, political players, civic society organisations and election observers who participated in last year’s harmonised elections on how the election was managed and to capture the aspirations of all Zimbabweans on how they would like to see election management in the future, ZEC chairperson Justice Priscilla Chigumba has said.

In a report titled “ZEC Strategic Plan 2020-2024” released a fortnight ago, Justice Chigumba said the views formed the basis of ZECs’ new strategic plan ahead of future elections.

“The new strategic plan intends to realign the operations of ZEC to be electoral cycle compliant with emphasis on rebranding, alignment of electoral laws and regulations to the Constitution, institutional capacity development, delimitation of electoral boundaries, and enhancement of electoral processes and procedures,” she said.

Justice Chigumba said ZEC had also made inclusivity as its core value.

”A major development in the new strategic plan is the addition of inclusivity as one of our values. This was done in order to recognise recent trends to make election processes participatory for men, women, youths, the elderly and people with disabilities,” she said.

She said ZEC also conducted a post 2018 election gender survey which examined factors that affected women’s participation in the       election.

In the same report, ZEC Chief Electoral Officer Mr Utloile Silaigwana concurred saying the strategic plan was a thrust towards improving the management of elections through the electoral cycle programming.

“As the electoral management body in the country, we want to make electoral processes transparent, inclusive and interactive. We need to put a straight record of what ZEC stands for, what it does and why, and what it intends to achieve,” he said.

Mr Silaigwana said ZEC was now focusing on stakeholder engagement, improvement of procurement processes through the establishment of an independent procurement management unit and moving towards programme-based budgeting.

“The Commission will continue exploring ways of expediting our electoral processes through strengthening strategic synergies and the adoption and deployment of relevant ICTs,” he said.