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Justice Rita Makarau

Senior Court Reporter
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chairperson Justice Rita Makarau says prisoners and those hospitalised during national elections have a right to vote and measures must be put in place to afford them their constitutional right in the 2018 general election. In a lecture at the Zimbabwe Defence College in Harare on Thursday last week, the judge said the Electoral Act does not provide for an administrative framework to ensure prisoners and patients admitted to hospitals vote.

Justice Makarau said ZEC was prioritising the realignment of the Electoral Act to ensure it recognises the minority groups that have all along been denied their right to vote.

“The Act doesn’t give administrative framework for giving effect to the right to vote by persons who will not be in their wards on polling day.

“Prisoners must also vote in terms of the Constitution as well as hospitalised patients,” she said.

Justice Makarau said journalists, who are deployed throughout the country to cover elections, must also be allowed to cast their ballot in the coming election.

“There are many people, who’ve been denied access to vote by circumstances beyond their control.

“For example, journalists may be deployed somewhere far away from their wards during the election period and such people, under the current framework, will not vote,” said Justice Makarau.

She said the realignment of the Act with the Constitution was the best solution.

“At the moment, our priority as ZEC is to realign the Act to the Constitution…”

The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists in 2013 filed a constitutional challenge just before the harmonised elections seeking an order compelling ZEC to allow journalists to be allowed special voting just like the uniformed forces and ZEC officials.

ZUJ lawyer Rodgers Matsikidze of Matsikidze and Mucheche law firm argued that the journalists deserved the same special treatment because they were mandated to cover the election and would be out of their constituencies.

The journalists’ body cited discrimination in Section 81 of the Electoral Act, which entitles civil servants only to a special ballot.

However, Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku threw out the application saying the section of the Act complained of, had since been declared to be unconstitutional in another failed challenge in which Zimbabweans in Diaspora were seeking to be considered under special voting.