ZEC drops bombshell

Politics
ZEC has announced that over 300 000 people were turned away from polling stations without voting while as many as 206 000 were assisted to vote during the just-ended elections.

THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has announced that over 300 000 people were turned away from polling stations without voting while as many as 206 000 were assisted to vote during the just-ended harmonised elections.

WONAI MASVINGISE

The revelation immediately sent aggrieved political parties reinforcing their allegations of massive electoral irregularities, vote theft and a flawed electoral process.

The “shocking” official statistics were released in statements published by ZEC yesterday.

According to the ZEC figures, the number of voters turned away constitutes a staggering 8,7% of the total votes cast while that of assisted voters amounted to 5,9%.

In a preliminary report of unverified statistics, urban areas had the highest figures of people turned away while Zanu PF strongholds of Mashonaland had the highest number of assisted voters. ZEC, however, did not provide reasons why the people were turned away.

Masvingo recorded the highest number of assisted voters with 34 950 while Harare had the highest number of persons turned away at 64 483.

In 2008, MDC-T almost made a clean sweep of votes in Masvingo while Harare is a traditional MDC-T stronghold.

Manicaland recorded 31 277 assisted voters and 42 525 persons turned away while Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East and Mashonaland West had 34 044, 27 974, 23 166 people assisted to vote respectively. The number of people turned away in Mashonaland Central was 18 517, Mashonaland East 20 464 and Mashonaland West 56 733.

In Midlands 35 543 people were turned away while 25 312 were assisted to vote.

In Bulawayo 2 313 voters were assisted and 11 388 were turned away. In Matabeleland North and South 14 314 and 9 462 people were assisted to voted while 14 424 and 11 521 were turned away respectively. MDC deputy spokesperson Kurauone Chihwayi said the figures confirmed that the electoral process was flawed.