MDC candidates impeded from registering for rural council elections

By Tichaona Sibanda
21 September 2006

The Nomination court for the country’s rural district council elections sat in major urban centres on Wednesday and based on returns so far, indications are that most opposition candidates failed to register because of the high costs involved. The elections are now set for October 7th.

The Herald reported Thursday that Zanu-PF had won unopposed in 148 rural district council wards out of the 355 wards whose results had been made public after the opposition parties failed to field candidates.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa explained in a statement however that his party had proved; ‘its invincibility and national character after fielding candidates in all the provinces in the country despite Zanu PF machinations to elbow them out of the rural areas. However 300 candidates failed to file their nomination papers due to bureaucratic impediments orchestrated by Zanu PF. Throughout the country, our candidates vying to contest in the forthcoming rural district council elections have received horrendous and unjust treatment at the various council offices, the police stations and at the nomination courts. The electoral laws require that prospective candidates acquire clearance letters from these three institutions, which clearly is a ridiculous rigging mechanism.’

Giving an example Chamisa said their candidates in Bikita and Hurungwe were fined various amounts ranging from $1 000 to $10 000 for seeking council clearance letters late even though there is no legal provision for such fines.

‘Our elections directorate is still compiling the figures but hundreds of our candidates had their nomination papers rejected because nomination court officials insisted their passport-size photographs were ‘not clear.’

In Bindura, Zanu PF thugs closed Goldprint, the only company offering emergency photo services, thereby prejudicing hundreds of MDC candidates who eventually were not nominated.

Last week officials from both factions of the MDC made it clear that most of their candidates would find it hard to register because of the amount required to do so. Each candidate was asked to pay Z$2 million each.

Ephraim Tapa, the newly elected chairman of the MDC-UK province, said in London Thursday the amount demanded by the local government ministry for candidates to register was way beyond the means of many candidates in rural areas.

‘These are candidates who are going for days struggling to feed their families, candidates who are failing to pay fees for their children and more importantly candidates who were short changed by the Reserve Bank when they failed to exchange their old notes. You can see the odds were heavily stacked against them,’ Tapa said.

Belief in opposition circles is that the amount raised from registering candidates will actually be used to finance the balloting exercise. It’s been known for a while now that government had insufficient funds to roll out such a mammoth task.

‘Being Zanu (PF) they had to find ways to marginalise the opposition because they don’t like competition. But being in the opposition we expect such things and the game is still on. We still have so many seats to contest, so its not like they have won, they have just taken a pre-determined lead,’ said Tapa.