Parliament is set to conduct consultations next week to gather citizens’ views on the petition that implores it to consider eight critical elements essential for electoral reform as well as the alignment of laws to the Constitution.
The countrywide public hearings will be convened by the August House’s portfolio committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.
The Election Resource Centre (ERC), a think tank and advocacy institution on democracy and election, along with 14 other Civil Society Organisation (CSOs), on 22 September 2015 submitted a petition to the Parliament of Zimbabwe demanding comprehensive electoral reforms.
In a statement the ERC executive director, Tawanda Chimhini, said the petition went through a critical scrutiny before Parliament decided to conduct the hearings.
It (petition) passed through all the necessary and legal stages in Parliament, but for some reason, could not be availed for public input. This is despite the fact that parliament was conducting public hearings on other pertinent issues.
“Finally, with enough pressure, public hearings on electoral reform petition are here,” Chimhini said.
The public hearings will run from Monday the 24th to Sunday the 30th of September. The first meeting will be held in Harare, followed by Concession, Mutoko, Mutare, Bulawayo, Tsholotsho and lastly Kariba.
Chimhini said this is the first time that a petition submitted around election issues has actually gone to the stage engaging the public for their views.
“This is also the first opportunity that public input will be considered in the alignment of laws with the new constitution. Past experience has shown that the Executive has exercised sole mandate to realign laws with the Constitution with regard to public input,” Chimhini said.
The ERC boss commended the decision by Parliament of Zimbabwe to take the petition to the public as it cements the role of citizens in electoral reform, two years before the election in 2018.
The petitioners are concerned and worried not only about the pace of electoral legal reform, but also the substantive content of the legislative proposals that have come from the Executive on Electoral Law.
The eight critical priority areas that the organisations what addressed are independence of the electoral body, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), align all laws that impact the political environment, a comprehensive, continuous voter registration resulting in a clean voters’ roll, enhancing Voter Education by creating more space for stakeholders other than ZEC, extending the Right to Vote to all citizens of Zimbabwe, wherever they may be, reconstituting the Electoral Court in compliance with the Constitution, ZEC must be solely responsible for invitation of Election observers and enhancing the role of ZEC in electoral boundary Delimitation.
