Zimbabwe: Electoral Supervisory Commission and the new Electoral Legislation
FROM EISA Zimababwe Election Update 2000, 2, 24 June, 3-4.
The Electoral Act was amended and new electoral legislation put in place reducing some of the Electoral Supervisory Commission's powers to conduct the forthcoming June 2000 parliamentary elections.
The Electoral Act (Modification) Notice, 2000 and the Electoral (Amendment) Regulations, 2000 endorsed on June 7, give the Registrar-General's office virtually all power to monitor and conduct the June 24-25 elections.
In an interview, the Chairperson of the ESC, Mrs Elaine Raftopolous said: "The amendments have taken the whole ESC structure and shifted it to the Registrar-General, which is unconstitutional. The government did this to have more control over the electoral process," said Mrs Raftopolous. "We feel angry, very angry, because we see the reason for having set up the ESC was to oversee and ensure that this kind of thing that is now happening is stopped. They have usurped our powers as regards to transparency and democracy," she said.
The ESC says it was handed proposals on the draft amendment just two days before it was passed. It charges further that the body was never included in the discussions to endorse the amendment.
Even the recommendations they sent to the Minister of Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, Mr Emerson Mnangagwa, were ignored says Mrs Raftopolous.
"They went ahead to endorse the amendment without consultations from the ESC. I had been promised that the cabinet would sit yesterday (7 June) and the draft was going to be discussed. Now the Gazette has been published without having come back to me," says Mrs Raftopolous.
The Electoral Supervisory Commission is one of four bodies in the country in charge of elections, the others being the Registrar-General, the Election Directorate and the Delimitation Commission.
Under the modification, the ESC's role is to appoint monitors to oversee the conduct of polling, verifying statements made by presiding officers and to monitor the counting of votes. The Election Directorate was given the mandate to accredit election observers from foreign countries. The Delimitation Commission was not referred to in the new legislation and thus its role remains the same; that being of dividing the country into constituencies in preparation for elections.
The ESC together with the Election Directorate must inform the Registrar-General of the names of appointed monitors and accredited observers. Observers must in turn pass through the Registrar-General's office and get accreditation certificates, which they must exhibit, to any electoral official on demand. These duties were previously the preserve of the ESC. Prior to the new amendment, the ESC had the power to conduct general elections, by-elections and to review any proposed election legislation.
The Electoral Act (Modification) Notice, 2000 and the Electoral (Amendment) Regulations, 2000 have not been well received by civil society organisations in Zimbabwe. "When you subject the monitors to Mudede whom they are supposed to be monitoring, you are virtually subverting the autonomy and independence of the monitors and observers," says Brian Kagoro, spokesman of the National Constitutional Assembly, an umbrella body of civic and church organisations.
Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace director Tarci Zimbiti said: The international observers who are here can now see for themselves that the whole process is defective, right from the word go."