Paul Nyathi
The ruling ZANU PF party appears to be a law on themselves as the party is set to go ahead with its District Coordinating Committee elections throughout the country this week.
The party is set to stand against the country’s Covid-19 regulations and the Health Ministry guidelines as it is set to gather thousands of people at each centre.
The party acting spokesperson Patrick Chinamasa declared that all is set for the Zanu PF District Coordinating Committee (DCC) elections this weekend.
Speaking at the weekly press briefing in Harare on Thursday, Chinamasa said preparations for the successful holding of the DCC elections to be held over the weekend in the remaining eight provinces are well on course.
The two metropolitan provinces of Harare and Bulawayo have already completed setting up their respective DCC structures.
A total of 1 248 polling stations in the eight provinces have been set, but they might be some additional deployments especially in bigger provinces, Chinamasa said.
“Let me hasten to say that by the end of day tomorrow (today) we might see a marginal increase in the number of polling stations, particularly in those provinces with more party districts. Satellite polling stations will be created. The satellite polling stations would be arrived at by the supervisory teams in consultation with their election commissioners. This should be done no later than the end of day tomorrow. Manicaland which has 260 polling stations has established 27 more satellite stations bringing the number to 287,” said Chinamasa.
The party will use the voters roll as it was in 2017 with subsequent updates.
“The voting will take place at polling stations. There is no mailing of votes in our case. All the results will be displayed outside each and every polling station as the party continues to entrench and expand the democratic space,” he said.
The printing of the ballot papers has been completed and the process of distribution to the provinces has already commenced.
“I want to emphasize that voting will take place on Saturday only. Collection of those results will take place on Sunday on the 6th of December and official announcement on the 7th of December on Monday by the national Command Centre”.
Chinamasa said provinces would be running the show with each polling station having a maximum of 120 voters, which constitutes the electoral college.
“We assure all peace loving, Zanu PF members and Zimbabweans at large who would be going about their business to do so freely as the elections would be conducted in a peaceful manner with the party having mobilised adequate security measures to deal with malcontents who might want to disrupt the process,” said Chinamasa.
The national elections command centre would be located at the party headquarters in Harare presided by the national chairperson Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, national security secretary Lovemore Matuke and the national political commissar Victor Matemadanda.
Voting will be done from 8am to 4pm at the respective designated ward centres across all the eight provinces and only candidates vetted and approved by the security department and commissariat will participate in the elections.
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga who is also the Minister of Health and Child Care recently banned all elections in the country due to Covid-19 restrictions. It is shocking then how ZANU PF is being allowed to proceed with its elections.