The Attorney-General’s office has been working on a draft of the Electoral Amendment Bill agreed to by the coalition partners in 2009 for tabling before parliament. The Bill contains sweeping electoral reforms that would make it mandatory for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to announce all election results within five days.

After the first round of the March 2008 presidential elections, the discredited old ZEC, led by Justice George Chiweshe, took more than five weeks to announce the results.

The anticipated Bill also proposes to remove police personnel from using the postal ballot, or being present at polling stations on election day. The partisan police force has always faced accusations of abusing their power when they ‘helped’ disabled or illiterate voters to cast their ballots in all elections held since 2000

A highly placed source in government told SW Radio Africa on Friday that the Electoral Bill and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Bill will likely generate heated debate in parliament.

The new amendments will also restrict postal voters to government officials serving abroad and polling officers who will be on duty on election day. People in this category will cast their votes a week before polling day and will be supervised by presiding officers from ZEC.

In the past almost all Zimbabwe Defence Forces members cast their votes a full month before election day. They were able to vote in their respective military camps, without the supervision of ZEC officials. In most cases their superior officers were their presiding officers, which forced the ZDF members to almost exclusively vote ZANU PF out of fear.

In the 2008 run-off, observers found evidence of en masse balloting in which troops were ordered to tick Mugabe’s name on their ballot papers.
There are also proposals in the new law that will compel voters to register and vote closest to where they live. At the moment there is a generic ward-based voters’ roll system for the entire ward or district which was abused in the past.

By SW radio