I was listening to Studio 7 last week, and I heard the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s Chief Operations Officer, Utolile Silaigwana, say that they would only be using translucent ballot boxes in the 29 March election.

This piqued my interest. A friend of mine got a ZEC flyer in her post box the other day, in which, among other things, it said there would be both cardboard ballot boxes and translucent ballot boxes in this election.

But then again, the flyer also had a host of other mistakes, including:

• Blind people will be assisted with their voting by the presiding officer and a Zimbabwe Republic Police Officer. This is not the case. Only the Presiding Officer and two other electoral officers or ZEC employees can assist a voter.
• The four different ballot papers (President, MP, Senator and Councillor) are each supposed to have a different coloured ballot paper. The ZEC flyer says they’ll each be coloured, but doesn’t explain which colour paper is which.
• Legal identification required to cast your ballot is your National ID OR your valid Zimbabwean passport – not both, as the flyer implies, and you don’t need to bring your proof of residence – the flyer my friend got had this bit scribbled out in blue ink!

Clearly, other people have been complaining about these errors. The ZEC has issued a press statement clarifying things, and in his interview, Silaigwana distanced himself from the flyers, saying that the education department handled the flyers, not him.

All this is a worry. When the MDC agreed to the 18th Constitutional Amendment last year in the South African mediated talks between them and Zanu PF, they were criticised for making too many concessions. But, the MDC insisted, it had to agree to the amendment, because it would legislate the ZEC, and enable the commission to start it work in time for the upcoming election. Now the MDC’s lost its foothold, and the ZEC is constituted, but its competence is questionable.

This year’s harmonised election poses an enormous logistical feat. It will feature an estimated 11,000 polling stations, each with four ballot boxes and four different types of ballots, each needing supervision, voters’ rolls, ballot papers, and other supplies. And never mind vote counting and results verification. All this would be difficult enough in a “normal” economy where basics like fuel supplies, electricity, paper and transport were guaranteed. We’re four weeks away, and it’s a pity we can’t have more confidence that the ZEC is up for the challenge.

Contact the ZEC with your concerns – or suggestions – on zecpr@gta.gov.zw

This entry was posted on March 5th, 2008 at 12:47 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Elections 2008, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.