allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Three ZEC Officials Convicted, Fined (Page 1 of 1)

Three Zimbabwe Electoral Commission officials from Masvingo were yesterday convicted and fined $8 million or one week in prison for contravening the Electoral Act after losing a ballot box while two other officers appeared before a Bindura magistrate on similar charges.

Steven Chipadza, Charles Muchatukwa and Bothman Beat had pleaded not guilty but were convicted after the court ruled that the State had submitted overwhelming evidence against them.

Cuthbert Muzvondiwa Huvaya (39), the Bindura Assistant District Administrator, and Chengetayi Manyanga (45), a headmaster at Marian Primary School in the town, were not asked to plead to fraud charges when they appeared before magistrate Mr Charles Murove. Chipadza, Muchatukwa and Beat manned a district election centre in Masvingo Province and were responsible for securing ballot material including ballot papers.

However, they did not get escort when they drove one of the vehicles carrying election material to Shilo Polling Station in Chiredzi North constituency and dropped a ballot box containing ballots for the just-ended harmonised polls. They did not report the missing ballot box and the case only came to light after a villager picked up some ballot papers and reported the case to police. Investigations by the police led to the recovery of all the ballot papers from the villagers. Police have since deplored the sentence saying it was not deterrent enough in relation to the gravity of the offence.

"We view the sentence as not serious as compared to the nature and gravity of the offence. This misconduct affected the whole credibility of the electoral process," police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Andrew Phiri said. "We implore the responsible authorities to review the penalties." Huvaya and Manyanga were remanded out of custody on free bail to April 17 when they would be furnished with the trial date.

The two would report at Bindura Central Police Station every Saturday as part of the bail conditions. They are also facing an alternative charge of breaching the Electoral Act. Lawyer Mr Graciano Manyurureni of Manyurureni and Partners appeared for Huvaya while Mr Ernest Jena of Dinha, Bonongwe and Partners appeared for Manyanga. The State, represented by prosecutor Mr Emanuel Muchenga, had opposed the duo's release on bail citing the seriousness of the matter.

Mr Muchenga said the State was concerned that the matter was being trivialised yet the general election decided the country's leadership and ought to be free and fair. "It is not only the applicant who is looking at the court as a last hope for salvation but also those candidates who are crying foul that they were prejudiced by their (duo)'s actions," he said. Earlier both Mr Manyurureni and Mr Jena had submitted that there was no likelihood of the duo absconding since they had been out of custody since their arrest at the weekend after police had released them on summons. Soon after the magistrate had granted them bail, the State evoked Section 121 of the law, which demands that an accused should remain in custody pending determination of an appeal against a bail ruling in their favour. However, the court ruled in favour of the duo after the lawyers argued that the cited section only applied to those who come to court from police custody.

"In a nutshell the law states that the status quo should be maintained. In this case the accused had been out of custody on police summons and they cannot be incarcerated," Mr Jena argued. Allegations are that on March 30 at the Bindura North constituency command centre, Huvaya, who was the constituency election officer in charge of collating the presidential, House of Assembly, Senate and local authority election results, intentionally failed to notice a mistake.

Mr Muchenga said Huvaya failed to notice that the senior presiding officer, Manyanga, had "mistakenly endorsed election results from Aerodrome open space polling station on Form 11 instead of Form 23". "The accused person's failure to notice the mistake resulted in the omission of election results from Aerodrome open space polling station from those captured by the provincial elections officer thus depriving all the election candidates of votes from that polling station," Mr Muchenga alleged. In the second case, the State alleged that Manyanga intentionally omitted endorsing results for the same polling station on Form V23 resulting in the Bindura North constituency Chief Election Officer, Huvaya, failing to capture the same results. "The omission was only realised after the results were sent to the Mashonaland Central Province Command Centre on March 30 2008," Mr Muchenga alleged. So far at least 15 ZEC officials have been arrested countrywide on allegations of electoral fraud and for manipulating results in favour of the MDC in the March 29 harmonised elections.

Eight officials were arrested in Mashonaland West, Gweru, Mutare and Binga, one in Manicaland, two in Masvingo another two in Mashonaland Central while two others were apprehended in Matabeleland North province.

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