Political Reporter

The Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has accepted the preliminary delimitation report tabled before parliament last week and urged the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to take into account feedback from other stakeholders before producing the final report.

Addressing journalists in Harare yesterday, CCC interim national spokesperson, Fadzayi Mahere said that the delimitation report was not the best neither was it the worst adding that the report was a starting point for demarcating boundaries for this year’s elections.

“It’s not the best delimitation report but it’s not the worst at the same time. It offers a useful starting point, I think what’s crucial in its entirety is what’s going to happen from here. The important thing is that the ZEC must make sure that it takes into account the feedback of stakeholders especially Members of Parliament, lawyers and other experts,” said Mahere.

Mahere added that indeed there was need for new constituency and ward boundaries to be drawn because the current boundaries were out of date as they were drawn up around 2007.

“It must be highlighted that the boundaries that Zimbabwe is using today were drawn up in 2007 for the purposes of 2008 elections. It’s untenable, unimaginable if not farcical to go to an election in 2023 with boundaries based on data that is over three election cycles out of date,” said Mahere.

According to Mahere, CCC was not dismissing the entire delimitation report but wanted it to be improved so that the ward and constituency boundaries would be in sync with the population and voter registration data.

Meanwhile, the preliminary delimitation report was tabled before Parliament and an Ad Hoc committee chaired by Honourable Pupurai Togarepi has since been set up to analyse the report before reporting back to the house on 13 January 2023.