Civil society to stage mass rally against election act

Civil rights groups in Zimbabwe plan to stage a mass rally in the capital Harare on Wednesday against proposed amendments to the electoral act which would deny many Zimbabweans the right to vote in upcoming elections. NGOs, civic organisations and human rights bodies believe the amendments put forward by President Robert Mugabe's government will notably curb the voting rights of Zimbabweans living abroad - many believed to support the opposition - in next year's presidential elections, due to be held before April. "The demonstration will show the revulsion of the people of Zimbabwe to what we see as great fraud," Douglas Mwonzora, spokesman for the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), a broad-based coalition of civic, religious and opposition groups, told a news conference on Tuesday. According to an article by the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) published on Tuesday, the amendments would designate the under-funded Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) as the only body to conduct civic education and would ban foreign funding unless directed to the ESC. Civil society organisations would therefore be prohibited from providing civic education. The EISA also noted that the amendments would mean that only civil servants will be permitted to observe the elections. But after more than two decades of ZANU-PF rule, the civil service is widely regarded as a partisan institution. International observers have also been blocked, the article said, notably in the September expulsion of a team from the US-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). Efforts by the US government and the European Union (EU) to gain clarification on what role, if any, would be possible for international election observers have been unsuccessful. The NCA and its supporters plan to gather outside parliament around midday on Wednesday to bar the country's deputies from entering the building to debate the proposed amendment. "This motion must not be entertained at all," Mwonzora said. The amendments to the electoral act, which were reported in the state-run Herald newspaper, stipulate that voters need to provide title deeds, certificates of occupation or lodgers' cards as proof of residence before they can register to vote. But many city dwellers do not own properties and live in illegal, make-shift structures in the city's working class suburbs. Village heads and traditional leaders will have to vouch for voters who live in rural areas. Reginald Matchaba-Hove, chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), a civic organisation, told AFP that the new regulations were a worrying development. "We are really worried about these changes and measures which don't seem to abide by the constitution," he said. The ZESN also questioned the government's decision to introduce the new regulations ahead of the presidential polls. "We should always be aware that flawed electoral processes are often a source of conflict," warned Matchaba-Hove.