The Committee noted that in the spirit of promoting and observing the principles of good governance that encompass transparency, justice and fairness, the report should have provided justifications for collapsing constituencies and wards. The Constitution in section 68 provides for administrative conduct or decisions that are both substantially and procedurally fair. Section 9 of the Constitution talks about good governance wherein Commissions and other bodies established by or under the Constitution should carry out their functions conscientiously, fairly and honestly. The collapsing of constituencies and wards affects the legitimate expectations of stakeholders who may be adversely affected by that decision. The explanation by ZEC during the oral evidence was that constituencies with fewer registered voters were collapsed to give in registered voters to the constituencies which had more numbers of the registered voters.
However, in some instances, the formula was not applied consistently as wards or constituencies with more registered voters were collapsed to boost numbers in wards of constituencies with fewer numbers. The case in point is Chikomba Central which had 16 611 voters which was collapsed to cede voters to Chikomba East and Chikomba West which had 14 240 and 30 187, respectively. A similar case was Gutu South with 18 645 voters which were collapsed to cede voters to Gutu Central and Gutu East which had 21 700 and 16 822 voters respectively. ZEC confirmed to the meeting that it was those constituencies with lower voter population which were being collapsed to meet thresholds in bigger constituencies.
4.1.1.4 Consideration of Factors in Section 161 (6)
The Constitution requires that all factors listed in subsection (6) must be considered. These are namely, community of interest, means of communication, physical features, and geographical distribution of registered voters, existing electoral boundaries and population. This will also require stakeholder consultations of the affected voters. The Committee noted that the formula or criteria used as well as justifications of the decisions were not provided. The observation of the Committee was that there was possible misinterpretation by ZEC of the twenty percent variance provision in subsection (6) as some wards and constituencies ended up having a variance of up to 40%. This therefore, defeats the spirit of the Constitution in trying to achieve equality of voters. The Annexure to the Report clearly demonstrates how the standard deviation in certain instances was well above the 20 percent variance.
In applying Section 161 of the Constitution, ZEC had an obligation to take due regard of other Constitutional provisions such as Section 3 (2) (j) which provides for the equitable sharing of national resources, including land and section 264 (2) (e) which speaks to the equitable sharing of local and national resources. In addition, in terms of Section 233 (c), ZEC has an obligation to promote constitutionalism and ensure that injustices are remedied.
4.1.1.5 Stakeholder Consultations
Section 37A of the Electoral Act requires stakeholder consultations. The Committee noted that stakeholder consultations were not fairly done considering that there are certain areas wherein key stakeholders such as traditional leaders were not consulted. Section 161(6) (d) of the Constitution provides that when dividing Zimbabwe into wards and constituencies, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission must, in respect of any area, give due consideration to any community of interest as between registered voters. This issue of non-involvement of key stakeholders is drawn in areas wherein registered voters were moved from their traditional leaders. To this end, the Committee’s view is that if stakeholder consultations were widely conducted, the community of interest issues should have been avoided.
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