BY DR MASIMBA MAVAZA
The Zimbabwe government consists of an elected head of state, the president, and a legislature. The presidential term lasts for 5 years, and is elected by majority, with a second round if no candidate receives a majority in the first round.The Parliament is bicameral, consisting of the House of Assembly and Senate. Following the 2013 constitution, the House of Assembly has 270 members. 210 are elected for five-year terms by single-member constituencies. Furthermore, the constitution specifies that for the two first parliaments, there are 60 additional seats reserved for women, 6 seats per province, which are filled based on the votes for in the single-member constituencies, using party-list proportional representation, distributed using the largest remainder method and the hare quota.[2][3] The Senate has 80 members: 60 are elected for five-year terms in 6-member constituencies representing one of the 10 provinces, elected based on the votes in the lower house election, using party-list proportional representation, distributed using the hare quota.
Additionally the senate consists of 2 seats for each non-metropolitan district of Zimbabwe elected by each provincial assembly of chiefs using SNTV, 1 seat each for the president and deputy president of the National Council of Chiefs and 1 male and 1 female seat for people with disabilities elected on separate ballots using FPTP by an electoral college designated by the National Disability Board.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has the duty to conduct the electoral processes efficiently and fairly. It will need to put in place all the necessary logistics to ensure that the process runs smoothly. In the upcoming harmonised election there will be a number of different elections that will take place at the same time. Firstly, there will be direct elections for the Presidency, the 201 constituency seats in the National Assembly and the seats in the urban and rural local authorities. Most voters will vote in these elections on the ordinary voting day. However, some persons, such as soldiers and police officers, who will not be able to vote on the ordinary polling day because they will be performing security duties on that day will be permitted to vote in advance of the ordinary election at special polling stations. Diplomats outside the country will be able to vote by post. A number of seats in the Senate, the National Assembly and the Provincial Councils will be allocated on the basis of a party-list system of proportional representation.
Below are five facts about the voting: Zimbabwe has 7 million registered voters who are expected to cast their ballots at 12.000 polling stations dotted around the country.
Voters directly elect a president, 210 members of parliament and more than 9,000 councillors. Sixty women will be appointed through proportional representation to the House of Assembly while 60 people will be appointed in the upper Senate chamber via the same system. On the face of it,the commitment to extending the vote to the Zimbabwean diaspora in presidential and parliamentary elections sounds worthwhile and deserved.
Such a generous gesture to Zimbabwean citizens living abroad also seems relatively straightforward, giving effect to one of the recommendations made by the Constitutional dictates.
The franchise for the diaspora could have started as early as 2018 if the optimism of the opposition was to be believed.
But such a fundamental change is fraught with logistical challenges, carries a big price tag and will raise a host of niggling ethical issues, as well as political headaches for parties other than CCC or MDC.
Zimbabwe elects its people from areas which are categorised as wards. A ward is described as
an administrative division of a city or borough that typically elects and is represented by a councillor or councillors. So voters are put according to the wards. A voter can vote for his or her counsellor from a ward. For counting purposes votes are counted from a particular polling station of particular polling ward.
However, in almost all instances, some restrictions apply. In some countries, citizens abroad are not allowed to vote in all elections, just second-tier elections.
Elsewhere there are upper limits to how long a citizen has been living abroad and still be entitled to vote.
The Zimbabwean diaspora is huge and there are some who carry Zimbabwean passports whose only engagement with the country is when they die and their bodies are to be repatriated.
Being that as it may we must point out that most emigrants are lacking specific knowledge available to domestic voters.
Most citizens abroad are not contributors in terms of tax or not being personally affected by the outcome, in the elections yet they want to make decisions for those who are at home.
While there may not be grounds for an absolute right to vote for citizens abroad, there are some strong arguments for granting votes at least to first-generation emigrants in ways that do not swamp resident citizens’ votes.
“The strongest grounds for this seem to lie in the extent to which they share some of the subjection of resident citizens, and the stake that they maintain in their country of citizenship over a lifetime.
The notion of the local vote being swamped is interesting.
The globalization of political, personal and professional life, the spread of democracy throughout the world and an increase in migration for many different reasons have all contributed to an increasing interest in voting rights for refugees, diplomats, members of the armed forces serving overseas and other people who are temporarily or permanently absent from their own country. While the constitutions of many countries guarantee the right to vote for all citizens, in reality voters who are outside their home country when elections take place are often disenfranchised because of a lack of procedures enabling them to exercise that right.
However, external voting operations are complex and pose considerable challenges. There is no electoral legislation implemented at each electoral event, using well planned and practical timetables and deadlines. Which means that diaspora vote will cause a lot of confusion electoral deadlines may not be met and it will open the vote to be tempered with.Since all planning steps and operational benchmarks lead up to the ultimate deadline of election day, the deadlines for each step are usually tight and inflexible, so subjecting the Zimbabwean electoral system to a diaspora vote is an unnecessary burden. Planning for sufficient resources to be mobilized quickly is crucial, while at the same time the political sensitivities of any electoral process often heightened in post-conflict situations have to be balanced. It is therefore justified in such situations to treat external voting operations as emergency operations, and those involved have to be prepared not only for the long working hours but also for having to take ‘short cuts’ with established standard procedures. However, the basic operational and electoral rules and regulations have to be followed so that the short cuts do not endanger the overall security and accountability of the electoral process. A high level of flexibility and creativity is indispensable in order to make external voting operations a success.
External voting by nonresident citizens has become an important feature of contemporary democratic politics, but is it the right time for Zimbabwe. However, compared to the average voter in domestic elections, we still know significantly less about migrants’ motivations to vote or not. Migrants are motivated by the lies they get from social media and make choices based on hearsay. Whereas analyses of external voting patterns offer insights into the results of external voting compared to origin populations, there is a lacuna of knowledge about why migrants choose to vote, or not, when they have the right to do so. migrants’ motivations to vote depends not only on residence and origin contexts but also on subjective factors and perceptions of the legitimacy of external voting.
When judging the results of any election, other decisive factors such as the general political climate, the existence of equal opportunities in the run-up to an election, the turnout on election day, and of course the vote-counting itself, cannot be excluded, since all of them directly impact on the actual outcome. However, by providing the means for nationals overseas to participate, the international community undoubtedly contributes to promoting the individual’s right to vote, and enhances democratic participation and peaceful development.
Zimbabwe has been holding harmonised elections since 2008. Harmonised elections are where elections are held at the same time for representatives of local authorities, Parliament (the National Assembly and the Senate), provincial councils and the Presidency. Harmonised elections are usually conducted every five years.
The five-year electoral cycle precipitates a heightened electoral mode in the socio-economic and political environment as it rolls towards its end and polls approach. This usually manifests in political parties carrying out their internal party processes of vetting and selecting their candidates (party primaries) and spearheading campaigns for their candidates and party positions (manifestos) relating to the impending election. In the run-up to the election, national processes that occur include voter education, voter registration and inspection of the voters’ roll to ensure that one’s name appears on the roll and s/he will be able to vote on Election Day.
Voting is the most basic act of political participation in democracies. Consequently, the question of electoral participation and turnout—‘Why do people vote?’—has been one of the most fundamental ones in comparative politics for over half a century. Despite, or perhaps precisely because of this, there is still no ‘accepted canonical model of voter turnout.
The notion of democratic responsibility links to another factor influencing the desire to vote: the urge to affect political realities in the country of origin should not overshadow the voters who are on the ground. Nobody knows the best MP for his constituency than the one on the ground.
While there is a genuine need for a diaspora
Vote a lite of things have to be done. It is not as easy as putting an X. Diaspora voting needs a lot more things to be put in place to achieve a most transparent and fluid process.
Vazet2000@yahoo.co.uk
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