Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede must stay away from voter registration exercise as he out of touch with modern voter registration technology exercise, opposition parties said.
The announcement by Mudede (Tuesday), contradicts reports by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) early this year that it is forging ahead with plans to conduct voter registration through Biometric Voter Registration after procuring BVR kits.
BVR will be used in the country’s elections for the first time.
Early this year, ZEC said they will roll out a fresh voter registration exercise removing Mudede from administering the election process.
Mudede Tuesday said residents with “old identity cards” will not be acceptable for voting in 2018 as they are “not machine readable” and those will need to be replaced with the machine readable cards.
Addressing journalists in Harare, Mudede said those with metal Identity cards will not be able vote and repeated previous statement that ‘aliens’ are excluded from voting in the country’s elections.
Mudede’s mobile registration exercise will start on the 4th of September and end on the 30th of November.
“The exercise entails the issuing out of Birth and Death certificates as well as National Identity cards and this is in preparation for the 2018 harmonised elections,” he told journalists.
“Zimbabweans must take advantage of the mobile registration exercise and obtain Birth Certificates and Identity documents or correct errors on their documents so that they will be able to register to vote and participate in the coming elections.”
He added, “Those who want to take part in the voting processes using counterfeit documents will be caught and will be prosecuted.”
Transform Zimbabwe leader Jacob Ngaruvheme said this is broad day light rigging.
“This is unacceptable, voter registration must be done by ZEC not the RG,” said Ngaruvhume.
“They want to rerun to their old system which they have used to rig previous elections.”
He added, “Zimbabweans will not accept that, they must be ready for backlash. We will resist this with contempt it deserves.”
People Democratic Party spokesperson Jacob Mafume said Mudede should not be near the elections.
“His job is to provide a citizens data base, he must stay away from completely and should not come back in our elections,” said Mafume.
“He is completely out of step with modern technology BVR.”
