THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) has lamented at the
poor turnout in its voter registration exercise in Bulawayo, and warned that
the city risked losing some constituencies in the next delimitation exercise.
“We are not registering even one person at any given week.
It was only last Saturday when someone organised a group of people in Pumula
suburb, about 15 of them to register as voters, our highest figure to date at
any given time,” Zec provincial officer Sithembiso Khuphe told Southern Eye
yesterday.
Khuphe said Zec’s target was to register plus 400 000
registered voters in Bulawayo to ensure the city gets 15 constituencies up from
the current 12 during the next delimitation exercise.
However, indications are that the city will lose at least
three constituencies as the current voter registered population for the city
falls far short of the minimum threshold.
Independent election watchdog, the Zimbabwe Election
Support Network has also warned of the same, saying the same fate is likely to
befall Matabeleland North and South provinces in the next delimitation
exercise.
“We are encouraging people to come and register. What we
have realised is that people only take voter registration seriously when
elections are around the corner. That is the problem we have.
“We had a target to get 15 seats with plus 400 000 voters
in Bulawayo when we started the exercise, but, unfortunately, that has not been
the case,” she added.
Bulawayo currently has about 258 000 registered voters.
MDC youth secretary-general Gift Ostallos Siziba said the
party’s national management committee meeting held in the capital on Saturday
resolved to deploy its senior officials to Bulawayo to help in rallying
residents to register to vote ahead of the 2023 elections.
“We noted with urgency the ongoing delimitation process in
Bulawayo metropolitan province and resolved to urgently deploy national
executive members to assist Bulawayo province in the voter registration process
that is ongoing,” Siziba said.
Bulawayo has been one of MDC’s strongholds since the
party’s formation in 1999. Zimbabwe last carried a delimitation exercise in
2007 ahead of the 2008 harmonised elections.
According to section 161 of the Constitution, electoral
boundaries must be delimited once every 10 years after a census. Newsday
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