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Setting the nomination date before publication of the final constituency boundaries
Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN)
February 06, 2008

Because of the increased number of parliamentary seats brought about by constitutional amendment number 18, it was necessary to carry out a fresh delimitation exercise. The Electoral Commission did this. The Commission then presented its preliminary delimitation report to the President. This report was then tabled in Parliament for noting on 17 January 2008. Parliament then adjourned without debating the report. Only one copy of the Delimitation report was made available to Parliamentarians in the papers office of Parliament. Parliament was adjourned until after the elections without debating the report.

Section 61A(8) of the Constitution provides that the President must cause the preliminary delimitation report of the Electoral Commission to be tabled in Parliament. This clearly implies that before the delimitation exercise is completed Parliament should be entitled to debate the report and make any recommendations for changes to the setting of constituency boundaries. In the present case, inadequate opportunity was given to parliamentarians to debate the report. By failing to allow this debate and to hear the recommendations of the parliamentarians, the President has acted unconstitutionally. The delimitation exercise has thus not gone through all the required legal processes. The delimitation process should not have been finalised without these steps being followed.

As at the end of January, the President had not published the final constituency boundaries as required by the Constitution and the Electoral Act.

There are further legal anomalies that have flowed from this defective exercise.

In the proclamation setting the date for the elections, as required by the Electoral Act, the President also set the date for the holding of the nomination court. The nomination date will be 15 days after the date of the proclamation.

The Electoral Act requires that the nomination date must be not less than 14 days and not more than 21 days after the proclamation. The object of fixing a minimum period between the proclamation and the nomination day is to give political parties an opportunity to decide who should represent them in each constituency. They can do so only if they know where the constituencies are going to be, and they cannot know this until the delimitation report has been published. Until now, they have not even had a proper opportunity to see the preliminary report. This makes a mockery of the nomination process. It also makes a mockery of the recent amendment to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Act which requires the Commission to keep the public informed about constituencies and other electoral boundaries.

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