Tough choice for Zimbabwe voters- Mnangagwa or Chamisa?

Election experts claim that it would be extremely difficult to steal more than 500 000 votes in this election, although given the narrow margin between the frontrunners,  that might still be enough.

Some activists advise the MDC to refocus its energy from last-minute demands on election rules to ensuring that it can field three trained party agents at each of the 10 985 polling stations due to be set up on 30 July.

Civic society organisations are putting just over 6 000 observers on the ground, and this will be part of a bid to organise a parallel voter tabulation as a check on rigging and other malfeasance.

To date, the ZEC has not revealed how it will transmit results from polling stations to provincial centres and then to the capital.

Some alternative networks have the capacity to collate results from all the polling stations, AC hears, along the pattern that was used by the opposition party in Ghana’s elections in 2016. If true, that would provide another valuable check on the ZEC.

A sample of the presidential ballot paper shows that, rather than listing the 23 candidates in one column, as instructed in the electoral act, ZEC has arranged the ballot paper into two columns, with 14 candidates in the first column and nine in the second column. This puts Mnangagwa at the top of the right-hand column. ZEC insists that this design was the most cost efficient of all the options.

Another tussle arose over the Electoral Officers’ Manual, which was not published on the ZEC website until 23 July. A leaked version had instructed Electoral Officers to place the screens in the voting booths so that the polling officers could stand on the same side of the screen as the voter, compromising the privacy of people’s votes.

Acting Chief Elections Officer, Utoile Silaigwana, claims this arrangement would allow polling officers to prevent people from photographing their ballot paper when they vote.

The ZEC’s Chigumba has also faced questions about her neutrality after she was accused of having an affair with Minister of Mines, Winston Chitando. Not only is Chitando a minister and a senior ZANU-PF official, albeit one with a career in the mining industry, but he is also running to be MP in Gutu Central, in Masvingo.

Edmund Kudzayi, a journalist, and former ZANU-PF official well-informed about party gossip and intrigue, couched the accusations in dramatic, sexist language. Several MDC activists gleefully joined in the insults against Chigumba.

This allowed ZANU-PF to divert the debate away from one of conflict of interest in a public institution towards an argument about a senior female official’s right to privacy. In fact, both the main parties have an appalling record on gender equity. Around 15% of the candidates in the election will be women.

A final element of uncertainty in the election is how the two main parties will hold together on voting day. Both are fractious coalitions.

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