Opposition complain over composition of commission

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has criticised President Robert Mugabe's appointment on Tuesday of a four-member Delimitation Commission, charged with redrawing constituency boundaries. The opposition claimed that the commissioners, led by High Court judge George Chiweshe, have strong links to the ruling ZANU-PF and alleged they would not be impartial. The MDC accused Chiweshe of having delivered a "questionable" judgement that kept MDC parliamentarian, Fletcher Dulini-Ncube, in prison on charges of murdering a ZANU-PF official. The parliamentarian was found not guilty by the courts. Another member of the commission, Job Wabhira, is a former permamnent secretary in the Ministry of Defence. In 1999 he reportedly defied several High Court orders to release two journalists from The Standard newspaper, Mark Chavhunduka and Ray Choto, after the army arrested and tortured them because of a report they had written. The other two members of the commission are University of Zimbabwe lecturers. "The appointments to the Delimitation Commission that were announced represent yet another breach of the SADC [Southern African Development Community] protocol on elections, and further vindicates the MDC's decision to suspend participation in elections," said MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube. Crisis Coalition, a pro-democracy umbrella NGO, also voiced its concern over the composition of the Delimitation Commission. With rural areas seen as ZANU-PF's political stronghold, "the most likely outcome of the Chiweshe commission is the increase of rural constituencies and the reduction of urban ones, with the view of giving ZANU-PF leverage," the group said in a statement issued on Wednesday. Parliamentary elections are due in Zimbabwe in March next year.