Harare (New Ziana) -The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Tuesday said it is now ready to accept nomination papers from candidates wishing to contest in the August 23 harmonised elections at the 103 nomination centres countrywide.
Nomination Courts sit on Wednesday to accept applications for Presidential, National Assembly and local authority candidates.
Presidential candidates will file their nomination papers at the High Court in the capital upon paying US$20 000, those for the National Assembly will go to the provincial regional courts where they will pay $1 000 while those seeking to contest for local authorities will drop their papers at council offices at no cost.
Addressing journalists, ZEC chief elections officer Utoile Silaigwana said some candidates have been filing their nomination papers online since the process was opened.
“Nomination court will sit tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10 AM and close at 1600 hours. No nomination papers will be received after that,” he said.
“We are set for this nomination court tomorrow (Wednesday); the voters roll for the nomination court is ready; and is now at the various nomination court centres and there will be a search facility to check the nominees and the nominators in the voters roll of that constituency which an aspiring candidate wishes to stand,” he said.
Ten registered voters in each of the country’s provinces will be required to nominate a Presidential candidate while National Assembly aspirants will require five nominators in his or her constituency.
“We want to advise candidates particularly those aspiring to be councillors to make sure that they are registered in the ward they want to contest in, in terms of the new delimitation boundaries so that they do not get disqualified” said adding successful candidates will get electronic copies of the voters’ roll.
“Successful candidates are going to get copies of the voters roll. They will get them electronically,” he said.
At least 6 598 523 voters are registered to vote in the general elections.
Deputy chief elections officer Jane Chigidji said at least 12 000 polling stations will be set up countrywide for the election.
“As for the polling stations, we are looking at roughly 12 000 because we may need to split polling stations with more than 1 000 voters to enable everyone to vote on election day,” she said.
New Ziana
