POLAD seeks Braille voting option

Source: The Herald – Breaking news

POLAD seeks Braille voting option

Bulawayo Bureau

THE Political Actors Dialogue (Polad) wants the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to provide Braille voting to allow visually impaired persons to freely exercise their constitutional right to vote.

They also want minimum control of campaigning, with just notification to police for small meetings, and no more than two-days notice for large political gatherings.

Other reforms seek State funding of parties to be split among presidential, constituency and local authority votes, allowing smaller parties to participate.

The call is part of the 16 political and legislative reforms identified by Polad’s three-member Governance and Legislative Agenda Thematic Committee chaired by National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) leader Professor Lovemore Madhuku.

Zanu PF members Cde Paul Mangwana and Advocate Fortune Chasi are the co-deputies of the thematic committee.

The reforms were identified as key in addressing concerns of political violence bordering on intolerance which leads to polarisation and instability.

Zimbabwe is set to go for harmonised elections later this year and President Mnangagwa is set to proclaim the date following the gazetting of the final Zec delimitation report.

The report sets the boundaries for the wards and constituencies to be used in the upcoming harmonised elections.

Polad chairperson and leader of the #1980 Freedom Movement Zimbabwe, Dr Francis Danha, said the visually impaired were entitled to exercise their right to vote in secret.

“Blind voters, like all other voters, are entitled to exercise their right to vote in secret. The Electoral Act must have a specific provision that makes it mandatory for Zec to provide for Braille voting,” he said

“This was agreed upon, and it’s part of the democratic process that encompasses all members of the society in a non-discriminatory manner. However it may not be possible to implement that in the shortest time, but nevertheless, we need to embrace it going forward.”

Dr Danha said as Polad, they believed the regulation of political campaign meetings must be kept to a bare minimum during the period from the proclamation of elections up to polling day.

“This must follow flexible arrangements with the police notified for record purposes only for door-to-door campaigns as well as indoor meetings where they will be less than 50 people, the same for open space meetings with less than 100 people,” he said.

For all other political campaign meetings, Dr Danha said Polad resolved that there must be a two-day notice to the police.

The political parties also recommended that the number of nominators for Presidential candidates must be increased from 100 to 200, with nominators being from at least five provinces.

Presently, a presidential candidate is nominated by a minimum of 10 voters from each province, making it a minimum total of 100.

The Governance and Legislative Agenda thematic committee also recommended that assisted voting on account of illiteracy must be restricted to voters above 70 years.

“In the prevailing situation, one person can assist an entire constituency, which is not a healthy way of doing democracy, we want to stop the unnecessary abuse of the issue of assisted voting, among many other proposals, which we agreed with the governing party, Zanu PF,” said Dr Danha.

“One person can assist, through even intimidation, a group of persons, and those not literate can easily be intimidated into submission that they can neither read nor write.”

Dr Danha argued that the system of the State funding political parties does not promote the growth of a truly democratic multi-party system as it does not take into account all votes cast in a general election.

“The Political Parties (Finance) Act must be repealed and a new financing model put into the Electoral Act and in that new model, funding must be for three separate elections namely Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Authorities. For each such election, the minimum threshold must be one percent,” he said.

In January this year, the ruling Zanu-PF party and opposition MDC-T shared $1,4 billion in terms of section 3 (2) of the Political Parties (Finance) Act (Chapter2.04), with the revolutionary party getting a bigger because of its high numbers in Parliament.

Dr Danha said while they were cognisant of the fact that all or some of the recommended reforms may not be implemented before the 2023 elections, they were confident that the country will still have free, fair and credible elections.

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