Zanu PF has won Bulawayo’s Cowdray Park local government
by-election which was marred by low voter turnout.
The ward fell vacant following the death of MDC Alliance
councillor Hapson Ncube in December last year.
Some polling stations were already deserted by mid-morning
in a by-election that had a high number of re-directed voters.
At least all contesting political parties and independent
candidates had polling agents in nearly all polling centres.
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (Zesn) — that
deployed observers extensively — also confirmed the large number of redirected
voters, blaming this on failure by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to
post the voters’ roll outside the polling stations.
“This (can be attributed to the fact that there are voting
centres that have more than one polling station leading to voters presenting
themselves at wrong polling stations.
Our concern is that the voters roll is not posted
outside/displaced outside and so people are not aware where they are supposed
to be presenting themselves for voting,” Zesn programmes officer Ellen Dingani
said in an interview.
The campaign period leading to the by-election was largely
peaceful though reports of intimidation, defacement of campaign and voter
education posters and materials were registered.
Zanu PF which has pulled all stops to win the by-election
is the only party that held rallies ahead of the polls.
The ruling party deployed top party officials from its
commissariat department led by Vice President Kembo Mohadi to lead the campaigns.
Mohadi also donated 60 tonnes of maize and 30 tonnes of
rice to Cowdray Park residents at one of the campaign rallies in a move that
some opposition parties complained about as a vote buying gimmick.
Zanu PF was represented by 2018 losing candidate Kidwell
Mujuru.
The MDC Alliance fielded two candidates Mloyi Nomagugu and
Collet Ndlovu as infighting ahead of the party’s May Congress played out in the
primaries to select the party’s candidate. Standard
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