Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has automatically lost seven potential council seats in Rushinga district, Mashonaland West after party politicians who pitched up for poll nomination got disqualified for filing in wrong constituencies.
Top party official David Coltart blamed the mishap on what he found as an opaque delimitation of boundaries by ZEC. The 2023 elections are being administered using the new delimitation report drawn by the country’s controversial poll management authority.
Coltart, who is CCC treasurer, took to Twitter to express dismay over failure by his party to field candidates in the missed wards. The former education minister said CCC candidates discovered on nomination day that their names had been moved to other wards.
“In Rushinga, CCC lost 7 wards mainly because the delimitation program affected candidates who could not know he or she could not represent the ward only to be told by the ZEC officials on the nomination day.
“This was compounded by ZEC’s refusal to provide the voters roll,” he said.
ZEC said recently that electronic copies of the crucial poll document will be availed to candidates who would have successfully filed their nomination papers. Addressing journalists last week, ZEC chief elections officer, Utoile Silaigwana said one can only run for the post of a councillor in a ward in which they are registered to vote.
“We want to advise candidates, especially councillors to make sure they are registered voters in the ward they want to contest in, in terms of the new delimitation boundaries. Voting is polling station based,” he said.
Zanu-PF claims that it has already won 74 local authority seats in which opposition parties failed to field candidates. A total of 1,970 council seats are up for grabs in the August 23 elections. The electoral body is expected to release names of candidates who passed the nomination stage Friday June 30.
Source – zimlive
