Accessing the referendum Vote

I first talked of what people were going to vote for, now lets see what we have learnt from the referendum.

Yes people wanted a new constitution and they are set on getting it
Yes again the people carried out the vote in a peaceful manner and I’m sure everybody is happy about that.

The pre-referendum period was largely peaceful but was punctuated by an upsurge in attacks on civil society organizations which witnessed raids and searches at the Zimbabwe Peace Project, ZIMRIGHTS, ZESN, NYDT and Radio Dialogue.

Such attacks on civil society impeded the ability of the CSOs to freely provide their services to the citizenry, and can stifle information to the communities especially as it relates to the referendum.

Voter Education- the ZEC embarked on a voter education outreach programme meant to inform prospective voters of the requirements and places where people were going to cast their votes.

The outreach meetings started on the 6th of March and were conducted until the 13th of March 2013 with ZEC deploying 2 voter educators per ward. Clearly the time allocated for voter education exercise was inadequate and indeed not far reaching.

Now we are looking towards the General elections set for June are we to expect violence?

This will be the topic of my next blog.....