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Zimbabwe’s election authorities have made major concessions to demands from human rights groups for safeguards against possible attempts at rigging the weekend’s vote, news reports said on Friday.
The Election Directorate has agreed to rescind regulations passed earlier this week that allowed only one monitor in a polling station throughout the elections. Instead, four monitors will be allowed in the polling stations, two during the day and the other two at night, said Sheila Jarvis, representing the Election Support Network, a grouping of 33 non-governmental organisations that has been training monitors for the election.
The directorate had also agreed either to allow monitors to travel on the vehicles carrying the ballot boxes, or to ensure that the vehicles could be closely followed by monitors. The boxes would be ferried either in open trucks, with no-one permitted to be on the back, or locked into the backs of closed trucks.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions