HARARE, July (ANA) - A Zimbabwean electoral support civic organisation, Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network (Zesn), says Zanu PF used State resources for campaign purposes in preparation for harmonised elections held on Monday.
“Zesn long-term observers reported a significant number of incidents of Zanu PF officials using State resources for campaign purposes. The most frequent types of abuse were the distribution of food or agricultural inputs, the use of government vehicles and facilities for campaigning, and government officials speaking at campaign events,” Zesn said in its preliminary report released Tuesday.
Zesn trained and deployed over 6,500 observers that were deployed to every ward, constituency, district, and province of the country as part of its effort to observe the 2018 harmonised elections.
The civic organisation also found out that Zanu PF benefited immensely from biased media coverage.
“The media fell short of fair, equitable and balanced coverage of political parties as it largely favoured established political parties. The nature of the coverage largely disadvantaged less established political parties who have not managed to get much media attention and have failed to take any offer of the advertising space. 53% of the coverage was on Zanu PF, 76% in state-controlled print and 48% on ZBC,” the election watchdog said.
While media bias was noted, Zesn said, there was no observable attempt by Zec to ensure that the media adheres to the provisions of the electoral act despite the existence of a media monitoring committee.
Zesn said the preliminary statement is based on reports from a statistical sample of 750 polling stations and “provide truly representative information on the conduct of voting and counting in near real time”.
- African News Agency (ANA)
