By-The opposition Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC) party has written to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) requesting a thorough investigation into anomalies found in the voters’ roll during the ongoing voters’ roll inspection exercise.

Voters across the country, including sitting members of Parliament from the opposition, say their names are missing from the voters’ roll.

Some of the registered voters whose names are missing from the voters’ roll voted in the March 2022 by-elections.

In a letter dated 29 May, addressed to ZEC chairperson Justice Priscilla Chigumba, CCC secretary for elections Ian Makone demanded investigations into the matter. Makone wrote:

We have noted serious anomalies in the voters’ roll that has been laid out for inspection by the public.

For example, in Ward 25 in the Gokwe Nembudziya constituency — all surnames starting from A to Mu are missing from the ward voters’ roll.

Registered voters who have been appearing on the biometric voters roll online inspection platform are suddenly missing their names from the current online platforms and the voters roll under inspection seems not to be synchronised with the new delimitation boundaries.

Resultantly, prospective voters have been displaced from their wards of residence.

Speaking to a local private daily Election Resource Centre (ERC) programmes manager Solomon Bobosibunu said:

Two people who spoke to me from Buhera Central had their names transferred to centres that are 23km and 65km away.

The voters’ roll has been tampered with and cannot, therefore, be trusted to deliver a credible election in its current rushed format.

A credible voters’ roll is just but one of the critical components of ballot eligibility.

If its integrity is highly compromised like what we are seeing now, then the election is better off shelved.

It has remained a secret to the rest of Zimbabweans and its rotten state is now smelling.

Zimbabweans must decide if they want to continue with Zec’s dark and underhand dealings.

Contacted for comment by NewsDay, ZEC chief elections Officer Utoile Silaigwana said:

What I want you to understand is that the purpose of the inspection of the voters’ roll is to check if ever there are mistakes in terms of names etc, then if there is a query then that query should be registered so that it can be corrected.

In a related development, Presidential spokesperson George Charamba said that President Emmerson Mnangagwa is expected to proclaim the election date in due course.

Stade media reports over the weekend had indicated that Mnangagwa would proclaim the election date on either Sunday or Monday but this did not happen.