Zimbabwe elections boss says this year’s polls cannot be rigged

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission boss Priscillah Chigumba says this year’s elections cannot be rigged and has challenged anyone who can prove otherwise to come forward.

Her remarks come following a report that one of the leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change Nelson Chamisa told a rally that he is winning this year’s elections unless they are rigged.

Chigumba said the elections cannot be rigged because the biometric voter registration system which the country is using for the first time is 100 percent secure.

“The BVR system is tamper-proof for the simple reason that the data that we collected is housed in something called the consolidation server. The consolidation server contains the master server that contains all the information and we then have other servers which we are using to connect that data. Those servers have very strict protection files. They are very strict un-hackable access level passwords that are tamper-free,” Chigumba was quoted by The Herald as saying.

“I can assure Zimbabwean voters, if any Zimbabwean or any other person who has information that ZEC is involved in practices which might be viewed as tampering with that data base, can they bring that evidence to us….

“I don’t want to comment directly on what political parties have said about other political parties. But I can assure the Zimbabwean voters that ZEC is doing and has done its level best to ensure its data is safe” she said.

Zimbabwe has pledged to hold free, fair and credible elections so that it can rejoin the international community.

Zimbabwe’s elections have been disputed since the MDC, formed in 1999, contested its first elections in 2000.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa needs elections whose outcome will be acceptable to the international community to unlock investment into the country.

The election date has not been proclaimed yet but they must be held between 21 July and 21 August.

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