8.2 Delimitation of Constituencies 8.3 Voter Education The Constitution stated in its transitional articles (Sixth Schedule Section 5) that the constituencies should not be re-drawn for these first elections. When the constituencies were drawn up in January 2008, the voter registers contained 5.6 million voters. The constitutional requirement at the time was that the size of the constituencies should vary a maximum of twenty per cent from the average size (Section 61A (6)). In the new Constitution the requirement was changed to “no constituency or ward of the local authority concerned may have more than twenty per cent more or fewer registered voters than the other such constituencies or wards” (Section 161 (6) (f)). This is a stricter requirement since the variation between any constituencies must not exceed twenty per cent as opposed to not vary more than twenty per cent from the average size. Appreciating that the transition articles set the requirement aside for these elections, Table 2 still shows how the average size of the constituencies per province meet the ideal of the Constitution at the time they were drawn up and the new requirement. The lowest average in 2013 was in Harare and the highest in Mashonaland Central. Adding twenty per cent to the Harare figures gives 31,039, which the Mashonaland Central exceeds with around 500. It must be noted that this check is done on the average size of each province, which means that there may be larger variations within the provinces. One should also note that the smallest constituencies were in Harare and Bulawayo which gave a small advantage to the MDC-formations. According to the law, only the ZEC and organisations accredited by the ZEC were allowed to carry out voter education. A number of such organisations were accredited. Province Bulawayo Harare Manicaland Mashonaland Central Mashonaland East Mashonaland West Masvingo Matabeleland North Matabeleland South Midlands Total Lower bound for the constituency size (-20%) Upper bound for the constituency size (+20%) Number of Constituencies 12 29 26 18 23 22 26 13 13 28 210 Registered voters Average size The register as per 9 July 2013 (not final) Registered Average voters size 313,459 766,478 709,664 488,477 624,630 582,589 699,199 345,264 342,280 739,510 5,611,550 26122 26430 27295 27138 27158 26481 26892 26559 26329 26411 26722 310390 798264 798677 568600 710323 656036 769263 383267 371143 821040 6,187,003 At the time delimitation in 2008 25,866 27,526 30,718 31,589 30,884 29,820 29,587 29,482 28,549 29,323 29,462 32066 21377 Table 2: The average number of registered voters per constituency for each province in 2008 and 2013. In 2008 the requirement was not to deviate more than twenty per cent from the average, whereas the 2013 Constitution made a stricter requirement whereas the 2013 Constitution made a stricter requirement where the difference between any constituencies should not exceed twenty per cent. For the 2013 elections the transitional articles stated that the 2008 constituencies should be used as they were. 26 8.4 Nomination of Candidates Nomination for all elections closed on 28 June 2013. The following candidates were nominated: The Presidency: Robert G. Mugabe, ZANU PF Morgan Tsvangirai, MDC-T Welshman Ncube MDC-N Dabengwa Dumiso ZAPU Mukwazhe Munodei Kisinoti ZDP The National Assembly: 757 candidates were nominated for the 210 single-member constituency seats contested. For the List PR female seats five parties (ZANU PF, MDC-T, MDC-N, ZAPU and AKE) filed lists, with a total of 204 individual candidates. The Senate: For the 60 seats in the Senate six parties (ZANU PF, MDC-T, MDC-N, ZAPU, MKD and AKE) filed lists, with a total of 210 candidates. Province Councils: For the contested seats in the eight province assemblies four parties (ZANU PF, MDC-T, MDC-N and ZAPU) filed lists, with a total of 248 candidates. 8.5 Freedom of Speech and Association It was a general opinion among the contesters that the possibilities for all candidates to campaign across the country had improved a lot. There were no areas where certain candidates could not move freely or where candidates were not permitted to campaign. 8.6 Media The most important media in Zimbabwe are TV and radio. State TV and radio were extremely biased in their coverage of the campaign and the State TV had in practice monopoly on political reporting. There were newspapers supporting both ZANU PF and the MDC formations. The Herald, a government newspaper, was mainly a spokes channel for ZANU PF and not the government as a whole. The media situation as a whole did not provide for a level playing field for all contestants in the elections. 27