Staff Reporter

MDC President Nelson Chamisa has accused the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) of attempts to rig the 2023 election through manipulating constituency boundaries in favour of Zanu PF.

This comes as ZEC has already started preparatory drawing of constituency boundaries ahead of the 2023 elections.

However, Chamisa said ZEC was manipulating new electoral boundaries in areas where it has been recorded that Zanu PF was no longer popular with the electorate.

Chamisa was speaking at the launch of a party election policy document: ‘20 Principles for Reliable Inclusive and Credible Elections in Zimbabwe’ (PRICE) at Sapes Trust in Harare.

“We will not proceed to accept the delimitation process by ZEC,” Chamisa told delegates who included diplomats and senior MDC officials.

“It is a gerrymandering process disguised as delimitation. They want to do anything under the cover of darkness and that will create problems for the country. There is no clarity on the delimitation,” he said.

Chamisa questioned why ZEC was carrying out the delimitation process before a national population census is done, something that has been the tradition in past elections.

“The issue of disputed elections has been perennial in this country and the cause of our current problems. We are saddled with disputed elections. We don’t want to go into 2023 elections when we have disputed 2018 elections.

“It is foolhardy that we go for 2023 elections without resolving the 2018 elections. If we resolve this, the better so that we don’t continue to reproduce our misery. People have always had premature excitement.

“We are not going to accept the conditions of the 2023 elections until we resolve the independence of ZEC,” said Chamisa.

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