Staff ReporterThe ruling Zanu PF party has ordered a re-run of primary elections in constituencies where big wigs linked to President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his inner circle were walloped by political novices.
The party’s secretary for administration Obert Mpofu told journalists in Harare on Saturday on the sidelines of a Politburo meeting that almost 10 constituencies would have to conduct fresh polls in areas where there were gross irregularities.
The party would announce a new date for the primaries in Mashonaland West, Harare and Mashonaland Central where some of the preferred Zanu PF parliamentary candidates failed to make the grade.
Mpofu said, “The politburo has resolved to have re-runs in constituencies where gross malpractices were noticed or were identified. The commissariat department will inform the affected constituencies at the earliest possible time. They are very few, less than 10. They are mostly in Mash West and some are in Harare … But the details of these constituencies will be pronounced by the commissariat department.”
Christopher Mutsvangwa, who is President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s special advisor, war veterans leader Douglas Mahiya, Matabeleland South Provincial Affairs Minister Abednico Ncube and several other senior party members bit the dust in the just-ended primary elections.
Zanu PF will be featuring Mnangagwa as the party’s presidential candidate this year after he toppled former president Robert Mugabe in a defacto military coup last November.
Mutsvangwa, Mahiya and others claim that the elections were rigged by the police in favour of some people believed to linked to the ousted Generation 40 faction of the party, which wanted former First Lady Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband.
