Founded in 2016, the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) is a consortium of Zimbabwean political parties fighting for electoral reform in the country. The ultimate goal of N.E.R.A is to ensure that Zimbabwe achieves democracy through a peaceful and democratic transfer of power.

Its mission is to ensure that Zimbabwe achieves democracy through a peaceful and democratic transfer of power. Pushed by the status of the uneven electoral terrain in Zimbabwe, N.E.R.A was formed as a bipartisan front to enable all pro-democracy parties to speak with one voice and push for electoral reforms.

The ultimate goal is to ensure that Zimbabwe achieves democracy through a peaceful and democratic transfer of power. This can only be realized through an electoral process which is fair, free and credible. N.E.R.A seeks to provide a platform for all parties that are seeking this common goal to work together to highlight the need for electoral reforms and mobilize awareness and support both internally and to the international world.

To date, the National Electoral Reforms Agenda (Nera) has approached Sadc, the African Union and the United Nations as part of efforts to force the government to reform the electoral system to level the playing field and ensure free and fair elections next year.This follows the recent fallout between the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) and political parties over the manner the country’s electoral management body was handling the proposed poll reform process.Nera, a grouping of 13 political parties, wants Zec to facilitate voting by all Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, with the help of the regional and international community, in the 2018 general elections. The Diaspora vote has become a thorny issue, with opposition political parties pushing for Zimbabweans living outside the country to be allowed to vote from their bases in line with the Constitution. But Zec insists that there was no legal framework allowing such voting to be conducted. Nera has submitted a letter to engage Zec, Sadc, AU, UN, regional and international embassies and other organisations to request for assistance with facilitation of the Diaspora vote.

In addition, Nera has put together safeguards necessary to protect voters and their vote. The NERA legal team accuses the Zanu PF-led government of dithering when it came to implementing constitutional reforms for the benefit of holding on to power and, therefore, the need to engage outsiders to help. They claim that the prevailing socio-political and economic crisis in the country is an outcome of the legitimacy crisis that has haunted the ruling party due to the persistent electoral manipulation. Nera wants the Diaspora vote to be implemented in the 2018 general elections. It is pushing for a clean biometric voters’ register (BVR), managed by Zec which could be provided upon request in machine-readable format as a precondition for a legitimate election. They want the voters’ roll to be be made public to allow proper verification of all listed voters. In addition, Independent biometric technical support must be used to verify and check the authenticity of the BVR system. Nera is also in the process of mounting a court challenge on the Diaspora vote as they continued to mount pressure on Zec