Except for in constitutional changes the Senate has little actual powers and the fully directly elected National Assembly is therefore the most important body. See Vollan 2013 for further discussions on the relationship between the houses, the legislative process and the relationship between the executive and the legislature. 5 The Election Related Legal Framework 5.1 The Electoral Act The Electoral Act was last amended with Statutory Instrument number 85 of 12 June 2013 given by Presidential regulations and not by amendments passed by Parliament. The President was empowered by terms of Section 2 of the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act [Chapter 10:20] to make such regulations as he considers necessary if the situation is affecting the general public interest of Zimbabwe and cannot be dealt with adequately in terms of any other law, and because of its urgency cannot await passage through Parliament.6 The use of such powers in this instance raised protests by lawyers and the opposition, since the parliament was still in session and could have passed the amendments. The amendments mainly concerned the necessary adjustments to incorporate elements of the new introductions by the Constitution, such as the proportional electoral system at several levels of government. Those amendments were as such not politically controversial. The protests were moderate and did not set the opposition’s participation in the elections at risk, even though the changes to the election law included disputed sections, such as the presence of the police in polling stations. Decisions made by the president according to the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act expire after 180 days, which for the Electoral Act means 10 December 2013. The Government gazetted on 3 January 2014 a bill to be tabled in parliament. This bill has almost the same content as the Statutory Instrument number 85 of 12 June 2013, with the notable difference that special voting for security personnel on duty on election day is removed and such personnel is instead given the possibility to cast postal votes. See Section 8.10 for a discussion of the special voting. 5.2 The Electoral Systems In the future, the president will be directly elected on a common ticket consisting of the candidate for the president and the first and second vice president. However, for the first ten years, the elected president may appoint the vice presidents, which meant that for the 2013 elections only the presidential candidates were on the ballots. The constitution did not specify whether the electoral system was a two-round system requiring at least fifty per cent of the votes or a plurality vote (first-past-the-post), but a 6 Extract from the preamble of S.I. 85. 10 two-round system is prescribed in the Electoral Code in accordance with what had become the practice over the years. The National Assembly has 270 members for a period of two terms. 210 members were elected by a first-past-the-post system in single-member constituencies (FPTP) and the 60 extra members, all women, were elected under a List PR system, six from each of the ten provinces. There was no separate ballot for the List PR race. The votes for the candidates in the FPTP race were added up for each party by province. The party totals in each province were then used for the distribution of the List PR women’s race. For the principal house of parliament equal voting powers is an important principle. For the sixty List PR seats to the National Assembly this principle is violated since the population of the provinces vary a lot, but the number of seats from each province is the same. The Senate consists of eighty members out of which sixty were directly elected by List PR, six from each of the ten provinces. There was no separate balloting process for the 60 elected senators; here too, the total votes won by each party in the FPTP race of the National Assembly were added up by province, and the six seats in each province were distributed based on the respective share of each party. The lists of candidates for these seats had to have women and men alternating starting with a woman. This meant that fifty per cent – and possibly even more – of the 60 elected Senate seats would be filled by women. The remaining twenty members were eighteen chiefs and two members representing disabled people. Most of the chiefs were likely to be men. In provinces that are not metropolitan provinces, ten members of the councils were elected by a List PR system, again using the votes cast in the FPTP National Assembly elections in the manner described earlier for the reserved seats for women and for the 60 elected Senators. In the metropolitan province councils, only the heads were directly elected for this purpose, others were ex officio members. Mayors for the metropolitan provinces were to be elected in accordance with regulations in the Election Law. This did not necessarily mean that they are to be directly elected, so in principle there was a choice between a direct election and the council electing them. Urban and local authorities were also elected. In both cases a council was directly elected. In the case of urban authorities the mayor was also directly elected but in the case of local authorities the mayor (or chairperson) was elected by the local council. Ballots were cast for the following races: i) The President; ii) The National Assembly by FPTP in single-member constituencies. These votes were also counted for the elections of the List PR women’s race for the National Assembly, the List PR members of the Senate and the ten List PR members of the provincial councils. Votes cast for an independent candidate in the National Assembly election would not have an effect in the other races; 11