Zimbabwe’s electoral body has set July 17-26 as the dates for the inspection of the voters’ roll that will be used to draw new constituency boundaries for next year’s general elections, APA learnt here on Tuesday.
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairperson Priscilla Chigumba said the outcome of the voters’ roll inspection would give an indication of the number of registered voters in each of the 210 constituencies.
“The purpose of the inspection of the voters’ roll is to allow members of the public to check if their names are appearing on the voters’ roll and to check if their details are correctly captured and, if not, to correct such anomalies,” the ZEC chief said in a statement.
She added: “Once all the corrections have been taken on board, the commission will then produce the final voters’ roll that will be used for the purpose of conducting the delimitation exercise.”
The delimitation exercise would determine – depending on the number of registered voters in an area – whether a constituency should be retained as it is or split into two or merged with another.
The delimitation of constituencies has often been a contentious issue in Zimbabwe, with the opposition accusing ZEC of conniving with the governing ZANU PF to allocate more constituencies in the party’s strongholds – usually rural areas – despite a noticeable trend of rural-urban migration.
Zimbabweans are due to choose a president, members of the national assembly and senate as well as local government ward councillors in general elections scheduled to take place by the end of July 2023.
JN/APA