Bitter aftertaste of being impatient to (register to) vote

Source: Bitter aftertaste of being impatient to (register to) vote | The Financial Gazette September 28, 2017

By Staff Reporter

LAST week the process to register all voters in Zimbabwe under the newly introduced biometric voter registration (BVR) process started, amid controversy. Controversy has always been part of Zimbabwean elections since 1980.

While the legality of the voter registration process is being challenged in the courts of law by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change which argues that it cannot start before all the BVT kits and the servers that would store the collected data have been delivered, registration is going on. Registration is currently taking place at 63 places that are spread throughout the country.

Ordinary citizens, members of the civil society organisation and the opposition are complaining that the process is very cumbersome and slow and could result in many prospective voters not being able to register on the new voters’ roll in order for them to be able to vote next year. On its part, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission insists that it is up to the challenge of registering all the seven million eligible voters in Zimbabwe by the end of the exercise in January next year.

Of all excuses that Zimbabweans can give for not joining the queue to register and later to vote, shortage of patience is certainly not one of them. Zimbabweans appear to have inexhaustible reserves of patience, if long and winding queues they spend most of their time in, is anything to go by. Queuing appears to have become a national ritual for Zimbabweans. These are the same Zimbabweans who, when asked to queue to register and later to vote, say they are too busy or important if not both to do so, only for them to go for years patiently queuing for some of the most basic services.

Many live to regret that had they not been busy or too important to queue to register as voters and then to vote, they could have avoided the queues. Those good citizens who do not vote, it is often said, indirectly vote all bad officials into office. In the 2013 harmonised elections, of the 6,4 million Zimbabweans who were registered as voters, only 3,4 million (54,3 percent) were either forced or persuaded to vote, while the rest were either busy or too important to be forced or persuaded to vote.