Maravi

Voters’ roll perfect: Mudede

Voters’ roll perfect: Mudede
by Staff Reporter
18/06/2011 00:00:00

NO other country in the world has a voters' roll that is "as 100 percent perfect" as Zimbabwe's, the country's registrar-general has said. Tobaiwa Mudede said Zimbabwe's electoral register had "nominal percentage error margins" and said his office was happy to allow critics to inspect the roll. A report published earlier this month by the South Africa-based Institute of Security Studies (ISS) said there 41,119 centenarians registered to vote in the country.

There were officially four times as many centenarians in Zimbabwe as in Britain, the report, titled Preventing Electoral Fraud in Zimbabwe said, despite the European nation enjoying a much higher life expectancy than its former colony.

Zimbabwe's average life expectancy is just 34 for women and 37 for men, according to the World Health Organization.

[That is a statistical construction, based on a lot of presumptions. The only thing that can give conclusive and reliable data is a national census. - MrK]

"You don't want these people to attain 100 years, you don't want them to be alive?" Mudede said.

"The law does not say once one attains 100 years he/she should be removed. It is their right to vote unless they come to say they want to be removed. We will, however, still advise them that it is their right to vote," he said.

Critics have accused President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party of manipulating the list for political advantage and say it includes children and people who have long since died.
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party want the voters' roll cleaned up before the next elections.

"I am not sure why he would want to defend such a shameful document," said MDC spokesman Douglas Mwonzora.

"No serious person will spend a second defending it. How can you allow ghosts to be on a voters' roll?"

"As a party, we have no issues with the voters roll," Zanu-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo said.

"We can win an election with it or after it has been re-done."

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS (ZIMBABWE), VOTER REGISTRATION

posted by MrK @ 6:36 PM