THE Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has lost seven potential council seats in Rushinga district, Mashonaland West, after their party politicians were disqualified for filing in the wrong constituencies.
David Coltart, CCC treasurer, blamed the issue on what he perceived as the opaque delimitation of boundaries by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
Coltart expressed his disappointment on Twitter regarding the party’s failure to field candidates in the affected wards. He stated that CCC candidates only discovered on the day of nomination that their names had been moved to different wards, which was a result of the delimitation program implemented by ZEC.
Additionally, he criticized ZEC for refusing to provide the voters’ roll, a crucial document for the electoral process.
ZEC recently announced that electronic copies of the voters’ roll would be made available to candidates who successfully filed their nomination papers. The commission’s chief elections officer, Utoile Silaigwana, emphasized that candidates must be registered voters in the ward they wish to contest, according to the new delimitation boundaries.
Zanu-PF, the ruling party, claimed that it had already secured 74 local authority seats in which opposition parties failed to field candidates. The upcoming August 23 elections will determine a total of 1,970 council seats.
The electoral body is expected to release the names of candidates who passed the nomination stage on Friday, June 30.