THE ruling Zanu PF party has deployed members of the Forever Associates Zimbabwe (FAZ) group ahead of tomorrow’s by-elections in Harare East and Mt Pleasant.
The group was in the vortex of a storm during the country’s
harmonised elections in August last year after setting up “Exit Polls” desks
outside polling stations where they quizzed voters who and whci party they had
voted for.
At the time, the ruling party was evasion and never openly
associated with the political outfit.
The two constituencies fell vacant when Fadzayi Mahere and
Rusty Markham resigned from Parliament in solidarity with their former Citizens
Coalition of Change leader Nelson Chamisa after he quit the party in a huff
citing infiltration by the ruling party.
Zanu PF has revealed
that it had deployed FAZ and Heritage Trust members at each polling station to
secure victory in the by-elections.
The party’s provincial vice-chairman for Harare Ephraim
Fundukwa told Vice-President Constantine Chiwenga at a rally in Harare East
yesterday that the leadership was leaving no stone unturned to secure outright
victory.
“I want to tell you Vice-President [Chiwenga] that the
Harare province team is working hard. We have 50 polling stations for the
by-election. On each of the polling stations, we have set teams of 20 members,”
he said.
“The teams are being led by provincial, FAZ, the Heritage
Trust and Young Women for ED members who are campaigning.”
FAZ president Kudakwashe Munsaka told NewsDay yesterday
that there was nothing sinister about is members to being deployed by the
ruling party because they were a Zanu PF affiliate.
“We have said umpteen times that we are an affiliate of
Zanu PF and this has not changed. Yes, indeed, if the party deploys us to
assist its campaign for any envisaged by-elections or any restructuring
exercises for its organs, we will willingly oblige. We live to serve, as our
motto aptly asserts,” he said.
FAZ emerged during the Zanu PF restructuring programmes in
2022, triggering chaotic party primary elections in which it was accused of
tilting votes in favour of particular candidates within the party.
During the August 23-24 harmonised elections last year the
group attracted widespread condemnation from the opposition CCC and observer
missions, who accused it of being part of Zanu PF’s vote rigging machinery.
In their recommendations after the 2023 polls, foreign
observer missions delivered scathing assessments of FAZ’s role in the
plebiscite. The European Union Election Observer Mission (EUEOM) leader Fabio
Massimo Castaldo said FAZ members intimidated the electorate.
The Commonwealth EOM, in its report, also raised concern
over the presence of FAZ in rural areas, sentiments which were shared by the
Southern African Development Community EOM. Newsday
0 comments:
Post a Comment