Zimbabweans will have to wait a little bit longer for President Emmerson Mnangagwa to proclaim the date for the harmonized elections which are due any time in August 2023.
While Mnangagwa at the weekend said that he would announce the date Monday, his spokesperson George Charamba told journalists at State House Monday night that he would do so “in due course.”
“The election proclamation is going to be announced in due course. That is all I can say at the moment,” he told journalists from the government-controlled Herald newspaper.
According to the constitution, the elections are supposed to be held between July 26 and Aug. 26. Mnangagwa was sworn into office on Aug. 26, 2018, for a five-year term, meaning that Parliament’s term would also end on Aug. 26, 2023. The constitution stipulates that elections to Parliament, metropolitan and provincial councils and local authorities should be held not more than 30 days before the end of Parliament’s five-year term.
More than 5.8 million people have registered to vote in the presidential, legislative and local authority elections, according to state news agency New Ziana.
The proclamation of the election date will set the ball rolling for political parties and independent candidates to start campaigning in earnest.
The ruling ZANU PF party has already held primary elections to choose candidates for the elections, while the two major opposition parties, MDC-T and Citizens’ Coalition for Change are yet to present theirs to the electorate.
Meanwhile, potential voters are inspecting voters rolls in their respective constituencies to see if their details were captured properly ahead of the elections after the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) opened the rolls for inspection Saturday. The inspections will end Thursday.
Several people have said that their names were not appearing in the rolls at their designated polling stations, but ZEC has assured them that all anomalies would be rectified before the elections.
ZEC chief elections officer Utloile Silaigwana told the Herald that by taking the voters roll to the people, the electoral body was allowing voters to audit it by checking whether they had been placed at the correct polling station. Enditem
