Polls watchdog, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) has insisted that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) should improve its level of engagement with political parties ahead of the 2023 elections.
The views from ZESN emanate from a recent incident in which ZEC turned down a dialogue request from the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC).
This was after CCC submitted a dossier of alleged electoral malpractices to ZEC with the intention of engaging the commission through dialogue.
However, responding to the dialogue request through a series of tweets the ZEC Spokesperson Jasper Mangwana said, “the commission does not meet individual stakeholders at the exclusion of others.
“Multi-Party Liaison Committees (MPLCs) are the dialogue vehicle for electoral issues.”
According to laws that govern elections in Zimbabwe, national Multi Part Liaison Committees are supposed to be established soon after the nomination court has closed.
Mangwana added that electoral malpractices should be reported to the police for further investigation.
However, ZESN Election Observation Manager Ian Goredema bemoaned the circumstances surrounding the declined dialogue request.
“This is most unfortunate because issues should be addressed to help deal with misinformation or disinformation and concerns political actors or stakeholders may have.
“ZEC may not be able to address every concern, but at the very least, some concerns should be addressed regardless of how many stakeholders raising the issue.”
Although Mangwana suggests that MPLC is a vehicle for electoral issues Goredema insists that the committees have successfully dealt with low-level issues which was a far cry from electoral malpractices at a national level.
“MPLCs continue to address the low-level conflict between political parties, and they have proved effective at the lower administration levels (district and provincial).
“They continue to form an important part of the dispute resolution mechanisms in the country,” Goredema said. Opposition parties in Zimbabwe are on record highlighting several alleged electoral malpractices which ZEC insists should be reported to the Zimbabwe Republic Police.
