The curious case of Zec’s $9,8m

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Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa’s decision to allocate the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) a meagre $9,8 million in next year’s budget has raised questions about the government’s commitment to ensuring free and fair elections.

Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa’s decision to allocate the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) a meagre $9,8 million in next year’s budget has raised questions about the government’s commitment to ensuring free and fair elections.

BY VENERANDA LANGA

Elections Resource Centre programmes coordinator Jack Zaba
Elections Resource Centre programmes coordinator Jack Zaba

Zec is already preparing for the 2018 elections and needs at least $50 million for voter registration alone.

Elections Resource Centre (ERC) programmes coordinator Jack Zaba said the $9,8 million was a pittance which showed that the Zanu PF government was comfortable with shoddy elections where a lot of voters were disenfranchised due to lack of adequate voter registration processes.

“The $9,8 million allocation happens against a background where ZEC needs $50 million for voter registration, yet government gives them only $9, 8 million inclusive of everything,” he said.

“When a government gives far short than what an electoral commission should get, it shows that they are already taking ZEC for granted.

“It means that the electoral commission will fail to deliver in a lot of issues pertaining to elections such as voter education, voter registration — and ultimately it means that Zimbabweans must expect a failed 2018 election.”

Zaba said come 2018, ZEC would have excuses for a failed election as they will simply say they did not have adequate resources.

“Zimbabweans must not allow a situation where we have poorly run elections because government has not provided enough resources. 2017 is a very important year before the 2018 elections because we expect the voter registration process to begin, and government should put more resources towards that,” he added.

Zaba said whereas government had always claimed that Zimbabwe was a sovereign state, that sovereignty was not guaranteed as long as they relied on international donors to provide money for voter education.

“Biometric voter registration will be introduced and even as it happens, we need extensive voter education of our people because it is a new voter registration process and they cannot get into it without adequate education,” he said.

“We cannot have uninformed voters because voter education must be done before voter registration.”

Zaba said voter education and registration needed in excess of $100 million.

MDC-T national secretary for elections Murisi Zvizwai described the $9,8 million allocation as a mockery to the principle of credible, free and fair elections.

“This budget is blind to the imperatives that ZEC has to undertake such as voters’ education roll out, polling station mapping, and procurement of biometric kits which will cost between $25 million and $40 million depending on the level that they would have opted for, notwithstanding the aid that they will get from cooperating partners,” Zvizwai said.

He said failure to allocate ZEC adequate funding would result in “bogus” and highly-contested electoral outcomes. “These bogus elections have been the result of government’s failure to deliver and are the author of bond notes, civil strife and failure by government to deliver services to the people,” he said.

“We need more money to ZEC to ensure a fresh registration process is opened in line with international standards.” Zvizwai said the Finance ministry must also allocate more money to the Registrar General’s Office to allow it to undergo a rigorous process to ensure Zimbabweans have national identity cards.

“The Ministry of Home Affairs must also issue an amnesty and waiver fines to people who have lost their IDs so that they are able to register on time for the 2018 elections, so that we have a situation where everybody [eligible]registers for elections,” he added.

Zvizwai said the issue of voter registration was to be soon debated by people from different political parties.

In the 2013 elections, ZEC was allocated $50 million for both the referendum and elections.

Research and Advocacy Unit senior researcher Derek Matyszak in a paper on ZEC management of 2013 elections, said compilation and maintenance of an accurate national voters’ roll was an essential part of the electoral cycle in order to sort out issues of duplicate entries, dead voters, and inflated voters’ rolls that can increase ballot count through ballot box stuffing, multiple voting and manipulation of figures.

In the 2016 national budget, Chinamasa allocated a meagre $8,3 million to ZEC, yet the electoral body had requested for $29 million to enable it to acquire vehicles for the voter registration exercise.

ZEC had requested $29 million to enable it to use this year’s by-elections to test-run its electoral machinery, including the recently-introduced polling station based voting system ahead of the 2018 elections.