HARARE lawyer and MDC legislator, Job Sikhala Thursday requested for trial postponement in a matter in which he is attorney for a fellow opposition MP, telling the court he was still grieving his daughter who died recently.
Sikhala is representing Mount Pleasant MP, Samuel Banda who is up for allegedly presenting a false residential address to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) ahead of the July 30 general elections.
A Harare Magistrates’ court postponed trial to January 21 to allow the lawyer to mourn his child.
Banda allegedly provided the false address during the national Biometric Voter Registration (bvr) exercise in December 2017.
He is being charged with making a “false statement or fact in any claim or application for registration to vote knowing the statement to be false” as defined in the Electoral Act.
According to the state, on December 28, 2017 and during the BVR exercise, Banda allegedly misrepresented to ZEC that he was residing in Harare’s low destity Mt Pleasant suburb so he could be allowed to register as a voter in that constituency when he did not reside there.
It is alleged that Banda went on depose an affidavit of residence for voter registration to ZEC’s Commissioner of Oaths purporting to be residing at the given Mt Pleasant address.
It is the state’s case that through the misrepresentation, Banda registered as a voter in the constituency where he contested as an MP and eventually won.
