The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission must be apolitical and should not dance to the whims of the ruling party.

By Leonard Koni- By not allowing MDC-Alliance which has more than two million people to the stakeholders meeting and not recognizing the party is just a recipe of disaster. The party represents a big number of people than those who attended the meeting. Priscilla Chigumba must be ashamed of herself.

The last week’s behaviour leaves a lot to be desired and it really exposes it’s double standards of discharging it’s duties and cannot be trusted by electoral players in Zimbabwe.

Its existence in Zimbabwe is now a complete joke, nightmare and a disaster.

This is prima farcie evidence that the institution has been captured since time immemorial by the ruling party hence the call for electoral and media reforms should be instituted before it’s too late.

Its unfortunate that the electorak body is now acting like a Zanu PF cell which always wait for a command from those who have the levers of political power.

ZEC has officially come a referee a player at the same time and has ceased its constitutional duty of supervising and running elections to the satisfaction of Zimbabweans.

The recruitment of ZEC officers must also be questioned, interrogated and scrutinised. It looks like the institution is wholly manned by central intelligence officers who appear to be enablers of the regime. It must stop being partisan and deliver its mandate without fear or favour.

It is critical that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission must be proactive and ensure that there is a level playing field for all contesting political parties. ZEC must be an examplary leader in electoral democracy and supervising elections from time to time.

In 2008 ZEC deliberately delayed to announce the Presidential elections  pitting the two late rivals Morgan Tsvangirayi of MDC and Robert Mugabe of Zanu PF. On March 29, 2008 unofficial preliminary results indicated a favourable result for Tsvangirayi.

Results were not officially released until May 2, when it was announced that Tsvangirai had garnered more votes (47.9 percent) than Mugabe (43.2 percent).

Gift Konjana who contested the 2018 parliamentary election under an MDC Alliance ticket, and a flawed counting process by (ZEC) saw the electoral body declaring Nduna of Zanu PF, the winner.

Soon after the count and declaration of     Nduna as the winner, Konjana demanded a recount and he came out a winner. ZEC admitted to the anomaly but up to now the case is still being swept under the carpet.

This underlines the level of toxicity in the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.