THE Election Resource Centre (ERC) said Zimbabwe has theoretically made a lot of improvements in terms of electoral reforms compared to other African nations, only failing at implementation level.
This was said by Tawanda Chimhini, the Director of ERC at the media launch of the 2019 Election Barometer in Harare on Thursday.
Chimhini said although many of the election regulations had been met in most of Southern African Development Committee (Sadc) and the Africa Union, the most important aspect of all this was the activity on the ground during and after elections.
“Even though a law had been passed in May 2018 that stipulated that the ballot paper should not be printed in excess of 10%, come July no one knows how many ballots were printed by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission,” Chimhini said.
He said ascertaining the number of ballots printed was important for verifying the number of votes cast.
He further said nothing had been done to enforce the laws and court rulings, making it difficult for electoral reforms to be implemented.
Chimhini said the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) had not acted on the issue of traditional chiefs who have continued to be political regardless of a court order against Fortune Charumbira to that effect.
He said the ERC was impressed with Zec’s 2020-2024 electoral reforms as it had introduced refreshing proposals specific to reforms and administration, adding that implementation was the only thing left.
Chimhini said the most important thing was to check how qualitative and implementable the whole process was.
“We might have a situation where they meet a political party. That alone is not important, but what they did on the issues that would have been raised in the meeting,” he said.
Chimhini also said Zec should act on the reforms without having someone take them to court.
“There is a provision that stipulates that Zec should display the voters’ roll at the polling station during the voting period. No one took them to court for it and now they are displaying the excel version of the voters’ roll in every by election,” Chimhini said.
The electoral reform barometer seeks to track and monitor progress on electoral reforms that have been made so far by government and Zec.