ED wants ‘voting day holiday’ for all Zimbabweans

HARARE: President Mnangagwa is mulling declaring the day of voting in this year’s eagerly-awaited elections, a public holiday, a government minister has said.

Justice and Parliamentary Affairs minister Ziyambi Ziyambi told the National Assembly on Tuesday that the Constitution allows the president to declare voting day as a public holiday.

“Also in terms of what you perceive, any job maybe essential depending on how you look at it but what the Constitution and the Electoral Act has done is that the day when we are voting, the president is obliged by law to declare it a public holiday.

“The Act in Section 92 also obligates all the employers to release their employees so that they can go and vote.

“This is also covered in the Act and all employers will be obligated. I think that is covered for presiding officers and everyone else, the law says the day can be declared a public holiday which I think it will,” Ziyambi told MPs.

Zimbabwe holds watershed elections in three months’ time.

The looming national elections have generated such interest among both ordinary Zimbabweans and ambitious politicians alike that a number of opposition leaders are set to contest Mnangagwa in the presidential plebiscite.

Nelson Chamisa of MDC-T has been identified as the biggest threat to Mnangagwa’s ambition to become the country second elected leader after Mugabe.