Harare - The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Tuesday said that it was working under a very difficult environment which was highly polarised and it wanted to establish a joint committee to probe reports of political violence.
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a meeting between the electoral body and civic society organisations in Harare, ZEC chairperson, Justice Rita Makarau, said the political polarisation in the country was negatively affecting their work. “We are saying that the environment in which we are operating in is a challenge in itself because people are so polarised, either they agree with you or they don't agree with you. There is no middle ground so we find that as a challenge; and it does affect our work on the ground,” Makarau said.
She said was in the process of getting relevant authorities to meet and establish a joint committee to investigate cases of political violence. “What we want to do is to encourage the key players to actually set up that machinery, it can be set up between the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, who are supposed to set up a joint committee that investigates any reported cases of political violence and they submit a report to us for consideration,” Makarau said.
She noted that the committee was provided for in the constitution, but had not been operationalised; adding that there was need to urgently align the country's laws to the supreme law. “So we want to operationalise that machinery so I can't say much at this stage until we have met these key players. It is for the first time that the machinery will be set up, it is in the law but nobody has operationalised it up to now,” she said.
The ZEC boss, who also doubles up as the chairperson of the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) said: “ZEC is guided by the law, there is what we call the universal adult franchise in Zimbabwe, in other words every Zimbabwean who is above 18 has the right to vote; and so that includes people in prisons, people in hospital, people who may be away from home and people who may be in the diaspora.
“And as ZEC we are saying we are ready to implement that as long as there is a law that tells us how that vote is going to be administered. Currently there is no such law so we are waiting for the alignment of our laws.”
Asked about concerns reportedly raised at the meeting on Monday held with opposition parties under the banner of the National Electoral Reform Agenda, Makarau said she was no aware of such development. “In the meeting I did not get the impression that they were unhappy so I am hoping to find out the source of their unhappiness in the next meeting because we did agree that we meet next week,” said Makarau.
“I thought all went well in the meeting and afterwards, they have not come back to us yet with complaints so we will get to hear their complaints in the next meeting and hopefully we will able to answer them fully and to their satisfaction.”
African News Agency