By Staff Reporter
OUTGOING Harare West MP, Jessie Majome has slammed the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) over its refusal to entertain complaints by opposition parties while claiming to be religiously following the dictates of the newly amended Electoral Act.
Zanu PF opponents in the July 30 elections are up in arms with the poll management authority over alleged failure to heed their pleas for a level playing field.
They have inundated ZEC with their complaints which has adamantly argued all its decisions were informed by the electoral law.
The electoral agency has vowed even an earthquake will not stop the July 30 election.
Speaking at a panel discussion at SAPES Trust last Thursday, the MDC-T legislator poked holes in the recently amended Electoral Act which she said was merely revisited by the Zanu PF-controlled government to include sections prescribing the biometric voter registration process.
Majome said Zanu PF also demonstrated lack of sincerity in seeing through a free and fair election by drafting in the provisions long after the BVR process had started.
Equally, the law says that the voters’ roll should be made accessible to candidates before nomination court sits but ZEC decided to proceed with the process anyway, momentarily forgetting this legal requirement.
These, according to Majome, were brazen acts of lawlessness by both Zanu PF which led the legislation process and ZEC which has ignored the law in some instances.
Majome, also a constitutional lawyer, took time to dissect the electoral law which she said was fraught with provisions which did not comply with the supreme law of the land.
Against such background, she argued that ZEC had no moral authority to stick its neck out and demand its space from the opposition insisting while trying to lean on faulty legislation.
“We should not pick bits of the constitution and use them to quarrel with the constitution and to suppress rights and freedoms because it’s not meant to do that,” she said.
“…It falls short of the standards set by the constitution, if ZEC says no we are doing what the Electoral Act says, this Electoral Act did not rise to the constitution.”
