The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has unearthed a scam in which some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) are providing incentives to hundreds of people to register to vote ahead of the March 26 by-elections and 2023 harmonised elections, resulting in the people making multiple registrations for them to access the money.
This was exposed after ZEC’s ultra-modern biometric
registration system, which among other things enables fingerprint mapping,
picked that many people had registered many times.
The election management body’s system eventually flushed
out those people as multiple applicants, but this was not before the NGOs and
CSOs had made noise accusing ZEC of registering fewer people.
Those who participated in the scam did not disclose to the
NGOs that they were already registered to vote but instead moved from one
organisation to another getting incentives in return for making an application
as a voter.
This was revealed by ZEC chairperson, Justice Priscilla
Chigumba in an interview with Zimpapers Television Network (ZTN) yesterday.
She was responding to issues raised by some NGOS on why ZEC
had registered fewer people in 2021.
“I will say this without fear. There were a lot of people
who were given incentives to register to vote and those people did not disclose
to the NGOs and CSOs that they were already registered to vote in order to
access the incentives.
“I am not implying, but saying this directly because they
were then flagged by our system to say there is a person with one set of
fingerprints who registered six times to vote, but they were already on the
voters roll,” said Justice Chigumba.
“Our system, if you registered ten times it will only
recognise one file. It will only say there is one registrant, you then come to
me saying we registered 260 people to vote, were you aware that they are
already registered, did you know whether their Identity documents were
authentic, did you know whether they had different fingerprints, you cannot
cheat the ZEC voter registration system.”
She said ZEC received reports that some people were moving
from one NGO to another, making multiple applications to get more incentives.
“I am telling you emphatically that this is what
transpired. It has been reported to us they would deliberately go to different
voter registration centres and deliberately go to different organisations that
were mobilising people to register to vote, and they would access incentives
but when it comes now to being entered as a registered voter, the system would
flag them as a multiple registrant.”
Turning to ZEC’s preparedness for both by-elections and
2023 harmonised elections, Justice Chigumba said everything was in place.
ZEc is going to launch a voter registration blitz in
February ahead of the 2023 harmonised elections.
Justice Chigumba said ZEC already had the $2 billion needed
to conduct the March 26 by-elections meant to fill vacancies caused by deaths
of incumbent and recalls by their political parties.
She said they had deferred voter registration blitz that
was set for December last year because of Covid-19 at three of their offices
and upon realising that the Registrar General’s office was not adequately capacitated to issue
identity documents, an integral factor on voter registration.
The voter registration blitz, she said, was never meant for the by-elections, but to
assist in the forthcoming delimitation exercise.
Justice Chigumba said the deferment did not disadvantage
any prospective applicant given that provincial and district offices were
always open and were never inundated with applicants as what obtains with the
RG’s office.
“Voter registration has always been held towards
delimitation. It has always been meant to beef up numbers for the delimitation
exercise. As a commission, we do not make arbitrary decisions. Voter
registration is continuous.
“Our stakeholders should understand that we have 10
provincial offices open on a permanent basis, 63 district offices open
everyday, the evidence in December is that our offices were not inundated with
applicants, we did not see long winding queues of people expressing the need to
register to vote. Our permanent offices were not inundated with numbers. Our
offices were open for those who wanted to register, what we postponed were the
roving kits,” she said.
Justice Chigumba said the delimitation exercise was
expected to start in September after the population census final results that
is expected in August this year. Herald
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