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The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has trained online content creators, the majority of whom use social media as a platform for churning out their work, on electoral concepts and processes in pursuit of ensuring the delivery of an electoral process whose integrity is beyond reproach.
Addressing the online content creators during the workshop held under the theme “Responsible Social Media Reporting for Free, Fair, and Credible Elections” Commissioner Rodney S. Kiwa, the ZEC Deputy Chairperson said elections are the means or mechanisms by which people make choices about who should represent and lead them, as well as express preference for given policies.
“Elections are instruments of legitimation for a body politic. They facilitate changes in leadership from one party to another in a way that is structured, competitive, transparent, and within a legal framework.
“Secondly, elections are not an event but a continuous process. A cycle if you will. An ideal electoral cycle would have the following key elements: a legal framework; electoral planning and organized implementation; civic training and education; official voter registration; election campaigning; voting; certified verification of election results; and post-election processes. In this regard think and see ZEC. Our purpose is to insure and ensure electoral integrity,” Commissioner Kiwa said.
He said in the electoral process, tension is inevitable and perhaps desirable to the extent that it can bring out the best of the contending parties or individuals, but can also bring out the worst.
“Though not the sole cause or source of pre- or post-election violence, the electoral process can, and indeed, is often exploited by the rogue element. For myriad reasons, including structural and institutional, legal and organizational, election-related conflicts and violence, have not abated across our continent, fueled deliberately or inadvertently by the media, especially the now pervasive social media,” Commissioner Kiwa added
The workshop explored and implored the potential role that social media partnering and collaborating with ZEC, can positively play in enhancing the democratic trajectory.
Participants were taken through the media law and ethics with regards to elections. The Data Protection Act was also elaborated and participants witnessed the process of the biometric voter registration process as the polling process.
This workshop was also meant to anticipate and prevent electoral abuse and malpractice in pursuit of promoting responsible citizenship.
“This workshop is about being faithful and truthful to our professional ethics and norms. Reinforcing them. It is about recalling the sanctity and inviolability of our supreme law, the Constitution, understanding the Electoral Act, and applying its letter and spirit, without any fear or favor. It is about ZEC and its social media partners finding each other for peace, development, and democracy in our country. It is about our national security as we think and prepare for the 2023 harmonized elections,” the Commissioner added.
