{"id":224049,"date":"2026-02-17T12:39:04","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T10:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/zimbabwe-election-watchdog-warns-against-constitutional-changes\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T12:39:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T10:39:04","slug":"zimbabwe-election-watchdog-warns-against-constitutional-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/zimbabwe-election-watchdog-warns-against-constitutional-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwe: Election Watchdog Warns Against Constitutional Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"35\">Local election think tank, the Election Resource Centre (ERC) has raised alarm over the proposed Constitutional Amendment Bill (No. 3) of 2026 saying the changes could undermine democratic accountability and weaken the country&#8217;s electoral system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"28\">In a statement, the civic organisation said the proposed reforms amount to a fundamental shift in Zimbabwe&#8217;s constitutional and electoral framework with potential consequences for regional democratic standards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"23\">At the centre of the concern is a proposal&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202602170195.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Zimbabwe\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/zimbabwe\/\">Zimbabwe<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Local election think tank, the Election Resource Centre (ERC) has raised alarm over the proposed Constitutional Amendment Bill (No. 3) of 2026 saying the changes could undermine democratic accountability and weaken the country&#8217;s electoral system. In a statement, the civic organisation said the proposed reforms amount to a fundamental shift in Zimbabwe&#8217;s constitutional and electoral [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[258,256,9729,3119,257,254,6853,22038,4686,421],"class_list":["post-224049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zimbabwe","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-constitutional","tag-election","tag-news","tag-south-africa-today","tag-warns","tag-watchdog","tag-zimbabwe","tag-zimbabwe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}