Police chief accused of poll irregularity

Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has accused the country’s police chief Augustine Chihuri of interfering with the conduct of the election in June’s parliamentary polls, media reports said.

In papers filed at the High court in Harare, an MDC candidate for the Chinhoyi constituency Silas Matamisa, claims that Chihuri ordered all polling agents and monitors out of the building at two polling stations while he remained inside with presiding officers. Matamisa said the agents and monitors were allowed back in after five minutes.

Matamisa lost to a ZANU-PF candidate by a margin of 574 votes, and said some ballots from one of these stations did not bear the presiding officer’s official stamp. “It is my submission that this loss margin is indicative of the fact that different results would have been achieved had there been no irregularities,” Matamisa said in his papers.

The MDC, which won 57 of the 120 parliamentary seats, is challenging results of 28 seats it claims it would have won had there been no irregularities. Other cases will be heard in the courts before 27 July.