Funding shortages mar voter registration blitz in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe on Monday began the month- long voter registration, an important step towards holding the presidential, parliamentary, and local elections possibly within two months. For the first time, people who hitherto been regarded as aliens were also eligible to register. At a registration center in the high-density suburb of Mufakose near Harare, Xinhua reporters saw both the young and the elderly go through the process in a smooth manner. A policeman deployed to the scene said although fewer people had registered early in the morning, the number quickly picked up later in the day. Xinhua reporters also saw the "former aliens", a term that covers people who was born in Zimbabwe to parents of Zimbabwean citizenship or any of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) nations, get their new identity cards for voter registration. SADC is a grouping of 14 nations in the southern Africa region. Nearly 2,000 centers have been established countrywide for the exercise, but Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede told a Parliamentary committee that few teams would be deployed because of a shortage of funds. He said that instead of each of the 1,958 wards in the country having its own registration team for 30 days as provided for in the new constitution, only four teams would be deployed in each of the country's 62 rural districts. The teams would spend three days at a station before moving to another, he said. The government has budgeted 13 million U.S. dollars for the exercise, but has so far been able to release only 60 percent of the budget. Mudede said a ward-based registration exercise would require about 100 million dollars, a figure almost equal to the election budget. "We will have to make do with the resources that are available. We will also make an assessment after two weeks to see problems we will be having," he said. "The question of funding curtails everything," Mudede said. "When a lion is starving, it does not go for the impala but for the grass." The voter registration blitz is being carried out ahead of presidential, parliamentary and local government elections to be held this year to replace the turbulent four-year coalition government headed by President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. The cash-strapped Zimbabwe government has asked regional neighbors to help source 132 million for the polls. A SADC summit to discuss Zimbabwe's poll funding and preparedness is also to be held. The meeting, which should have been held on June 9, was shelved after Mugabe indicated that he would not be able to attend because of pressing issues at home. Mugabe, the 89-year-old Zimbabwean leader, is compaigning for a re-election to prolong his 33-year rule of the country since its independence in 1980.