President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s failure to gazette the delimitation report as expected on Friday will once again raise questions about the independence of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) ahead of a major election this year.
Zec chairperson Justice Priscilla Chigumba on February 3 presented the final delimitation report to Mnangagwa, who was required by law to gazette it by midnight on February 17.
The deadline passed without any word from government, only for the president’s spokesperson George Charamba to take to social media yesterday with claims that the final report has not been submitted to Mnangagwa.
Chigumba is on record having said the report that she submitted to the president was final and Zec was now waiting for it to be gazetted in terms of the law.
The presidential communications department said as much on Twitter that same day, but there were attempts later by some government officials to muddy the waters by claiming that the final report was yet to be submitted.
Jacob Mudenda, the speaker of Parliament, also weighed in during debate in the National Assembly a fortnight ago when he said: “What Zec has said and done in that report is final.”
Mudenda, whose role as head of Parliament is central in the delimitation exercise, advised legislators not to listen to what Zanu PF politicians were saying about the status of the delimitation report, but follow what is in the constitution.
It would appear from Mnangagwa’s actions that those who were not interested in following the dictates of the constitution as far as the delimitation exercise is concerned are having the last laugh and that is a huge blow to democracy.
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It became apparent when Zec produced the first draft of the delimitation report late last year that Zanu PF factions were not happy about the proposed ward and constituency boundaries as they felt they would disadvantage the ruling party.
Some shadowy groups that have pledged support to Mnangagwa publicly challenged the report while a Zanu PF activist believed to be aligned to the president approached the Constitutional Court seeking to have the report nullified.
A group of seven Zec commissioners distanced themselves from the report for unclear reasons and if all these events are put together there is a pattern that emerges.
There is a clear attempt to compromise Zec’s independence by politicians whose only interest is to preserve their power and if they are allowed to prevail that would sound a death knell to Zimbabwe’s nascent democracy.
