Opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has absolved some of its double candidates including St Mary's Fredrick Masarirevhu while blaming ruling party affiliate Forever Associates of Zimbabwe (FAZ)'s infiltration.
Masarirevhu is among the 15 double candidates that were allegedly registered by FAZ in Harare as part of efforts to destabilize CCC.
According to the opposition, other double candidates were also recorded in Kariba, Marondera, and three in Bulawayo.
At local authority level, the party has 18 double candidates spread across Bulawayo, Marondera Municipality and Nkayi Rural District Council.
Speaking at a press conference in Harare, Wednesday, CCC spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere said the party has decided to address the crisis of double candidates internally.
Mahere was responding to a question on the opposition's position regarding Masarirevhu who is vying for the St Mary's National Assembly seat together with the party's endorsed candidate Brighton Mazhindu.
"We do not know, it's a forged signature, so we do not know who actually forged it but the person represented as having signed for him did not sign for him," Mahere said.
She added that the issue of forged signatures was not unique to Masarirevhu but also to some candidates.
CCC deputy elections secretary Ellen Shiriyedenga said some of the candidates were known Zanu PF members who had weaseled their way into ZEC's systems through FAZ to cause alarm and despondency within opposition.
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"Upon hearing that we have double candidates and knowing very well that those people were not duly sponsored by the party we went to inspect the papers which they lodged before the nomination court.
"We discovered that firstly that those people forged signatures of our designated officials that were authorised to sign in Bulawayo and Harare," Shiriyedenga said.
"Secondly we also noted that particularly in Nkayi RDC and Bulawayo municipalities there was a new list of signatories that were not authorised by the party."
According to the deputy elections secretary, the Electoral Act and through ZEC before any election, the political parties are supposed to fill out the VN5 form which provides the list of persons that are duly authorised to be signatories.
"We did that as CCC, we filled in the VN5 forms and submitted that to ZEC for our national authorised signatories and also the provincially authorised signatories.
"ZEC had the list of our people but to our surprise, they accepted nomination papers that were signed by persons that were not duly authorised by the party."
She said the names of the alleged signatories were Mbuso Siso, Jabulani Ncube and Sengeso Nchabangu.
Shiriyedenga said CCC had submitted the party symbol in black and white on gloss paper while the papers of fraudulent candidates were photocopies of the original documents the opposition had submitted.
She also revealed that the nomination papers submitted in Bulawayo had a yellow background which differed from CCC documents' black and white.
