THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) yesterday claimed that its voters roll was “very perfect” after only 1% of registered voters made corrections to their details.
Statistics released by Zec yesterday show that the turnout
for the delimitation voters roll inspection was 50,03%, with 2 904 253 voters
out of 5 804 497 registered voters confirming their details.
Of these, 789 967 (27,20%) physically visited polling
stations to inspect their details and 2 114 286 (72,80%) used the Unstructured
Supplementary Service Data service.
Zec said it received 27 788 (0,96%) requests for
corrections on name changes, spelling errors and addresses, among others.
The exercise ran from July 17 to 27.
Zec spokesperson Jasper Mangwana told NewsDay that the few
number of errors showed that the voters roll was perfect.
“27 788 queries came from the people that needed
corrections. Some changed names, surnames and some were just typo errors, which
is 0,96%. It means that the voters roll is very perfect and there is no reason
to continue to worry saying the voters roll is in shambles when the owners of
the details have inspected them,” Mangwana said.
“50,03% (turnout), that’s a huge number. If you’re the
owner of information coming to inspect and you’re happy with it, it means that
what the commission is doing is in compliance with the level of accuracy needed
by a lot of people.”
Mangwana said Zec had since started effecting the
corrections.
But opposition parties, political analysts and election
watchdogs said the voters roll could only be said to be clean if Zec addresses
concerns raised by civil society organisations.
“It will be premature to validate the perfectness of any
voters roll before it is subjected to a comprehensive audit and public scrutiny
to ascertain its completeness, currency, and accuracy,” Citizens Coalition for
Change interim deputy secretary for election Ellen Shiriyedenga said.
“The public has not
had sight of the updated delimitation voters roll. There is a potential
under-registration of over two million eligible voters.”
Zimbabwe Election Advocacy Trust executive director
Ignatius Sadziwa said: “The voter inspection turnout figures are far from
pleasing despite a mobile searching platform which we hoped was going to ease
the process.
“It’s incumbent on all stakeholders to engage and build
consensus around citizens on such important national issues.” Newsday
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