The opposition characterized Zimbabwe’s parliament’s decision to accept a stunning increase in the fees that prospective presidential candidates must pay, from 1,000 to 20,000 US dollars, as discriminatory on Thursday.
“These candidacy fees, which discriminate against citizens according to their economic status and exclude the poor and those on the margins, violate the Constitution,” Fadzayi Mahere, spokesperson for the main opposition party, the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), told AFP on Thursday.
The date of the presidential and legislative elections in this southern African nation is set for August 23.
Emmerson Mnangagwa, the 80-year-old president in office, is charged with silencing all dissenting opinions. After Robert Mugabe’s resignation in 2017, he was elected president the next year (50.8%) in a bloody vote. He will compete against pastor and CCC leader Nelson Chamisa, 45.
Compared to merely $50 in 2018, candidates for the parliamentary and senate elections will now be required to pay $1,000.
The ruling ZANU-PF party, which opposition parties assert has access to more financial resources, is favored by the substantial increase in the cost of the ticket to participate in these numerous elections.
A supposedly “patriotic” law criminalizing any “attack on sovereignty and national interest” was already adopted in Zimbabwe on June 1. The opposition and NGOs, who are concerned about liberticidal excesses before the general elections, label the law “terrible” and ambiguous.
