BALLOTS PRINTING STARTS NEXT WEEK

Printing of ballots to be used in next month’s harmonised elections will begin next week following the closure of the window period for aspiring candidates to withdraw their candidature yesterday.

Candidates that filed their nomination papers last week had until yesterday to withdraw their nomination papers if they so wished. Zec commissioner and chairperson of the Multiparty Liaison Committee (MLC) Dr Qhubani Moyo said the ballot would be printed locally in the presence of political parties and observers. He said this during a meeting to form the national MLC yesterday.

“Now that we are going to close the withdrawal of candidates we are going for printing next week,” he said.

“The ballots are going to be printed by local companies. The Presidential ballot and the National Assembly will be printed by Fidelity Printers and the Local Government ballots will be printed by Printflow here in Harare.

“We are going to invite contesting parties and independents to come and witness the process of the printing so that we deal with certain perceptions that we have had before in particular to deal with allegations  that the ballot paper had elements of chromatography which allowed the migration of an X from one particular candidate to another. We want to satisfy ourselves that all is well so that we deal with perceptions. You see perceptions matter in elections so we must deal with them,” Mr Moyo said. Herald

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