Binga North legislator Prince Dubeko-Sibanda says the faults that have been identified in the Delimitation Preliminary Report can easily be solved and do not warrant the postponement of elections.
The legislator made the remarks during a debate of the Ad Hoc Committee that had been set to go through the Delimitation Preliminary Report by Parliament.
According to the report of the Ad Hoc Committee, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) disregarded various requirements when they did their delimitation whose report is before Parliament.
Some legislators and political commentators have suggested that elections be suspended to allow ZEC to do a proper delimitation, while others have suggested that the report be thrown away.
However, Honourable Dubeko-Sibanda said in as much as ZEC performed badly, the mistakes and errors are not too gravy to warrant drastic action.
He said most the issues raised can easily be rectified in a short time.
Below is the full text of what Honourable Prince Dubeko-Sibanda said in the National Assembly:
HON. P. D. SIBANDA: Thank you Mr. Speaker. The question that I want to speak to is whether in view of the findings, observations and recommendations that have been made by your Committee and as they are going to be either validated or added to by this House, whether ZEC should be given more time to rectify those observations and implement them, or whether this nation as it heads towards its General Elections, should revert to the 2007/2008 Delimitation Report. I submit that the variations or the failure to observe the law that was done by ZEC in its preliminary report are not fatal to an extent that this nation should revert to the 2007/2008 Delimitation Report or that this nation should be forced to postpone elections in order to give ZEC more time.
I will support my assertion Hon. Speaker by indicating that most of the observations that were made by your committee are actually implementable within the time that is left and to allow this nation to proceed with the elections as planned and as given by the Constitution. I am saying so because the issue of the census report is pardonable because that forced ZEC to act within a particular point of time. It is my submission Hon. Speaker that while this recommendation has been made, there is no way that ZEC can start the process afresh because the horses have already bolted in terms of the first recommendation.
On the issue of misinterpretation and misapplication of the twenty per cent variance, I submit that within the timeframe that is left, ZEC can comply with the recommendations that were made by your committee and be able to make sure that it finalises the process of gazetting the Delimitation Report without affecting the time within which the elections are scheduled. However, for posterity and it is also important to take note that this is the first time that delimitation has been conducted in terms of the 2013 Constitution. Therefore, I submit that going back to the 2007/2008 report is not something that is favourable because the 2007/2008 report is overtaken by 15 years and obviously there are a lot of things that have taken place between 2008 and 2022. There have been so much movement of voters between different areas to an extent that the current report could be closer to speaking to the true reflection of the voter population distribution in this country compared to 2007/2008 and for that purpose, I am more amenable to the current report being adopted by ZEC with recommendations that have come from the Ad hoc Committee and from this House and that the nation should go ahead to conduct its elections within the time that it is meant to take place. We cannot at this moment condemn this report and then say let us have the work of moving the elections from the time that they were scheduled. Those are my submissions. I thank you.
