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Zimbabwe's Elections 2013 - Index of Articles
Mudede
evades voters’ roll questions
Phillip Chidavaenzi, NewsDay
August 03, 2013
http://www.newsday.co.zw/2013/08/03/mudede-evades-voters-roll-questions/
The Registrar
of Voters, Tobaiwa Mudede, yesterday refused to explain his failure
to release the electronic copy of the voters’ roll, an issue
now at the centre of the
July 31 harmonised elections dispute.
The MDC-T alleges
that the roll was doctored to suit Zanu-PF’s interests.
According to
provisions of the Electoral
Act (Section 21), Mudede was obliged to furnish candidates with
the hard and electronic copies of the roll “within a reasonable
period of time”, but only the hard copy was made available
just a day before the polls.
At a Press conference
held in Harare, Mudede said the electronic version of the roll had
become a “contentious” issue, before referring the question
to one of his officers.
“The time
we had was short. What we had to prioritise was the hard copy so
that we could send them to the polling stations,” the officer,
only identified as Muchira, said.
Pressed further
on which between the hard copy and electronic copy would have been
easier and faster to dispatch, the evasive Mudede said he had a
right not to answer the question.
“I am
entitled not to answer certain questions,” he said. “You
can’t have a perfect system. There is always a 10% margin
of error. This is an international system.”
He accused the
MDC-T of coming to collect the voters’ roll late in the day
on July 30 following a court ruling to that effect, saying it was
a deliberate bid to frustrate him.
“They
sent their people at 4pm, but we had been expecting them in the
morning. The idea of their coming at 4 o’clock was to disable
me,” he said. “I had to stop my staff from knocking
off and we had to print the 1 958 copies they wanted.”
Mudede accused
the MDC-T of double standards and came short of calling them bad
losers, arguing that in 2008 they did not accuse him of manipulating
the roll because they had bagged a significant number of seats.
“All over
the world, when people lose, they point fingers. This is a different
industry where a lot has to be said. If people win, they don’t
talk and if they lose, they talk. It’s part of the game,”
he said.
Turning to the
Diaspora vote, Mudede said although his office had been registering
Zimbabweans living abroad and he had personally gone to Kenya and
South Africa to oversee the process, he was not authorised to speak
on the matter.
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