SCANDAL: Chamisa accused ZEC of giving advantage to Zanu PF • Zimbabwe publishes electoral reform Bill • Text: ZESN report on mobile voter registration • Zim registers 800 000 new voters as MDC cries foul • Campaign manager attacks councillor with bottle • Muzorewa plots political comeback • Zanu PF wins Zaka by-election after MDC boycott • No judges to hear MDC election challenges • Zanu PF wins Chiredzi South by-election • Zanu PF maintains control in rural Zimbabwe • Trudy Stevenson: Give people freedom to elect best candidates • MDC takes electoral battering in by-elections • Zimbabwe has no money for council elections • Paul Themba Nyathi: Zimbabwe's expensive democracy

By Albert Makoni

A SHOWDOWN is looming between Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party over the drawing up of new constituency boundaries.

The opposition party this week rejected new constituency demarcations announced by the government-appointed Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).

The electoral commission last Thursday announced new boundaries for parliamentary constituencies for the country’s 10 provinces, openly disregarding demands by MDC to suspend the exercise until the conclusion of ongoing talks between the two parties under South African President Thabo Mbeki’s mediation.

Giving the clearest signal that the opposition party and the electoral commission are on a collision course, MDC spokesman and Kuwadzana MP Nelson Chamisa distanced the opposition party from the delimitation exercise by the ZEC, describing it as a scandal.

“What we are witnessing from ZEC right now is a major scandal that has shocked all Zimbabweans who are looking forward to a free and fair election next year. These are senseless shenanigans by Zanu PF in its attempt to rig next year’s harmonised elections”, said Chamisa.

Zimbabweans vote in key presidential and parliamentary elections next March. The elections will be held concurrently for the first time in the country’s history after both the MDC and Zanu PF voted for a constitutional amendment. The amendment also increased the number of parliamentary seats from the current 120 to 210.

Chamisa vowed that his party will not recognise the new demarcations announced by the illegitimate electoral commission.

“As a party we maintain that the commission is biased because its composition does not accommodate the spirit of the current inter-party talks. Because the commission has refused to recognise our concerns, it remains an illegitimate commission and as a result its actions and pronouncements will also be treated as illegitimate”, said Chamisa.

The ZEC said last Thursday that according to its newly collated figures, the total number of registered voters in Zimbabwe now stands at 5 612 464.

The commission said following the signing of Constitutional Amendment No 18 last October, the country has now been divided into 210 parliamentary constituencies -- 90 seats more than the current 120 elected parliamentary seats -- for the House of Assembly.

As a result of the new demarcations, the ZEC announced that Bulawayo Province now has 12 constituencies invariably making it the smallest province in Zimbabwe in terms of registered voters.

Matabeleland North Province now has 13 constituencies, Matabeleland South 13, Mashonaland West 22, Midlands 28, Manicaland 26, Mashonaland East 23, Mashonaland Central 18, Masvingo 26 and Harare 29.
The MDC elections directorate says the new demarcations show a deliberate bias against the opposition with Zanu PF strongholds gaining more constituencies as compared to traditional MDC strongholds, mainly urban centres and Matabeleland.

MDC officials protested that its major stronghold, Bulawayo Province, had been delimited to become the smallest province in the country because of “a fictitious voters’ roll being used by ZEC”.

The MDC secretary for elections, Ian Makone, claimed that vote rigging by Zanu PF and its arms is now in full swing as evidenced by the allocation of constituencies which “demonstrates a trend of bias towards the ruling party.”

The MDC official says most of the 90 new constituencies have been allocated to rural provinces which are traditional strongholds of the ruling party giving Zanu PF an unfair advantage ahead of the crunch plebiscite.

According to the new allocations, Harare and the three Matabeleland provinces which are regarded as traditional MDC strongholds have gained a paltry 28 of the 90 new constituencies while 62 have been taken up by the rural Mashonaland provinces.

The MDC elections directorate noted that of the 210 constituencies, 143 were rural constituencies (Zanu PF strongholds) while only 67 were urban or peri-urban (MDC strongholds) which automatically gave the ruling party a technical two-thirds majority.

The commission says it is forging ahead with the controversial exercise of delimitating constituency boundaries.

ZEC chairman Justice George Chiweshe on Thursday said the delimitation of constituencies and ward boundaries had already started adding that the commission had set up provincial and district committees to spearhead the process.

“The process of demarcating constituency boundaries has started in earnest and the commission has set up provincial and district committees to spearhead the process. ZEC is the authority of the delimitation exercise with a specific mandate to demarcate constituency boundaries”, said Chiweshe.

The Morgan Tsvangirai-led faction of the MDC wrote a letter to ZEC last week demanding that the delimitation exercise be stopped in order to allow for the conclusion of the inter-party talks.

The protracted talks which are aimed at creating common ground between the political parties and springing permanent solutions to the country’s political and economic crisis are scheduled to wind up by 15 December.

The MDC has demanded the dissolution and the demilitarization of the electoral commission.

The MDC is calling for the appointment of an independent electoral commission to preside over the demarcation of constituency boundaries charging that the current body is staffed with former military personnel, Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) operatives and Zanu PF functionaries.

Commission chairman, George Chiweshe, is a former military lawyer having served the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) as a court marshal judge.

The opposition has also called for the establishment of a new voters’ roll insisting that the ZEC is using a flawed voters’ roll to delimit constituency and ward boundaries.

But Chiweshe says the commission will not be bogged down by the MDC protestations suggesting that the opposition party is playing to the gallery of the international community by making scurrilous allegations against his commission.

“The MDC has written to us raising its concerns on the composition of the commission and the voters’ registration exercise and we have responded to them in confidence. We know that there will be complaints and compliments along the way, some valid and some not valid,” said Chiweshe.

The ZEC chairman accused the MDC of making specious allegations “without giving facts and evidence.”

Observers say the MDC and Zanu PF are headed for collision as they approach the last stretch of the inter-party talks with opposition demanding “tangible deliverables” while the ruling party is bent on making minimum concessions.
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