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Zanu-PF presses panic button
Movement for Democratic Change
April 29, 2013

The MDC has noted with great concern the fraudulent activities around the voters’ roll which have been unearthed in different constituencies around the country.

Names of some voters are missing in the voters roll while some have all the correct information but the names are misspelt which can disenfranchise the voter.

In Harare North for instance, a ward 18 voters’ roll was purchased on the 15th of April with 151 pages and 8305 names on it. Two days later, on 17th April the same voters roll was re-purchased, but this time it had 183 pages and a total of 10 076 names. A difference of 1771 new names in two days.

Furthermore, the MP for the area, who is also the Minister of Home Affairs, Hon Theresa Makone noticed that her name was not in the voters’ roll purchased on the 15th April and she took the case up with the Registrar General. She then purchased the same voters’ on 17 April and this time, her name appeared but it was misspelt.

In ward 42 of the same constituency, on 15 April the voters roll had 94 and a half pages with 5 196 names. Two days later, it had 310 pages and 17 068 names. The Registrar General’s office ostensibly registered 11872 names in two days in this ward. In total, Harare North Constituency had more than 13 000 new voters added to the voters’ roll in two day. This is impossible. Such anomalies then necessitated the door to door verification exercise in which members of Hon Makone’s campaign team were arrested.

The MDC is aware that Zanu PF is bussing people to voter registration centres as well as placing their members in the RG’S offices in Manicaland to point out who should and shouldn’t be registered.

Meanwhile, mobile voter registration exercise which we understand has started is marred by many irregularities as the exercise began without full information on the exercise. The registration centres including the areas being covered have not been communicated to members of the public. This morning, the MDC made a request from ZEC for the mobile registration centres but these are still to be communicated.

It is absurd that the Registrar General’s office will roll out such an exercise without giving people adequate information regarding dates and venues for the exercise.

The MDC demands that the full information on the mobile registration exercise be made available to all people and should target all wards not a select few as indicated in the current exercise.

Reports coming from Mbire, in Mashonaland East indicate that those who want to acquire identity cards and to register to vote are being asked to pay $2 for replacement of the cards while the so called aliens are being asked to pay $40 to swop their identity cards to enable them to register to vote as citizens of Zimbabwe.

This is despite the fact that the Home Affairs Ministry made a statement to the effect that no one should pay to replace the identity card until after the voter registration exercise and that aliens should get their particulars free of charge as they were prejudiced not of their own volition.

The MDC encourages the people of Zimbabwe to take advantage of the mobile voter registration exercise to register as voters while the party engages stakeholders including SADC for intervention to address the anomaly witnessed in the early stages of the registration exercise.

The people of Zimbabwe are ready to vote the dictatorship out of government and replace it with the social democrats that will push for a new Zimbabwe in which people have jobs, food, peace, democracy and prosperity.

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