Maravi

Musonda questions behaviour of foreign, local election observers

Musonda questions behaviour of foreign, local election observers
Written by Masuzyo Chakwe
Monday, November 03, 2008 6:53:46 AM

CENTRE for Elections and Governance board trustee Gershom Musonda yesterday said the behaviour of foreign and some local observers in the just-ended 2008 presidential elections is highly questionable.

Commenting on the independent Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) results by Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP), the Anti Voter Apathy Project, SACCORD and the Zambia National Women’s Lobby, which were released yesterday, Musonda said it was too early for monitors to release preliminary results for the election.

“Firstly international observers, they have been too rushed, just on the day of voting itself, they declared the elections free and fair, I think it was immature and it was a wrong way. Just on the day of voting, them they were looking at the peace that could have prevailed at the counting centres. As monitors, we look at the entire process, how did the campaigns go, nominations what issues are being raised by stakeholders,” Musonda said.

“Secondly, even FODEP yesterday, their position was that all had gone on well, today they have even consolidated that, according to international standards, we didn’t even remind them in the morning, it is wrong, monitors are supposed to wait two, three days after the elections, they issue an interim report, seven days, 10 days later you issue a consolidated report and FODEP had always done this. We don’t know what has gone funny during these elections.”

He accused FODEP, AVAP, SACCORD and the National Women’s Lobby of not being critical from the moment the campaigns started.

Musonda said this was not surprising because these organisations worked closely with ECZ and all their movements to and from South Africa and money for voter education came through ECZ.

“So there is a serious compromise and then their final position on this election is equally wrong. By yesterday there were still questions ECZ had not answered from the stakeholders. There were serious questions and from PF there was a suggestion that can you hold on to the announcement of the last results until we resolve these issues.

In Kasempa, there was a question of Sata and Miyanda’s results were swapped and it took a deadlock of about three hours until it was resolved, that’s how it should be,” he said.

He also said the contesting political parties were very disappointing as they did not have all the statistics, polling station by polling station.

Musonda said there were so many polling stations where there were no signatures of polling agents and this showed lack of preparedness.

“They should have addressed these gaps, you don’t rely on the ECZ 100 per cent. The issues from stakeholders have to be resolved because what will happen is that voters are losing confidence in the electoral process and most of the people including myself I see no reason why next time I should vote because I am not changing anything.

My decision is not being respected, the issues raised are not being addressed, people will now be looking for alternative means to change the government, it’s unfortunate it will create apathy. It’s a pity anything can happen and we can’t live like that in an democracy,” he said.

He said ECZ had also been resistant, as they had not been listening to critical voices of how things should be done.

Musonda gave an example of the extra ballot papers and where they were taken looking at the low voter turnout.

“All these issues are causing confusion so the ECZ has failed and local NGOs most of them have not done their work properly and it is leading to civic apathy and anything to do with ECZ, people will not respond it’s a pity,” said Musonda.

Earlier, FODEP president Stanley Mhango during a press briefing said the official results for the 2008 presidential elections announced by the ECZ reflected the will of the people.

Mhango said the results were consistent with the official results published by ECZ.

He said analysis of the results and turnout both and national and provincial level showed no significant inconsistency with those provided by ECZ and no evidence of manipulation.

The PVT findings state that President Rupiah Banda got 39.1 per cent of the votes, PF’s Michael Sata got about 37 per cent, UPND’s Hakainde Hichilema got about 24 per cent, HP’s Brigadier General Godfrey Miyanda got 0.95 per cent of the votes with 1.7 per cent rejected ballots.

Mhango said FODEP’s findings were based on information on polling and counting collected from 885 polling streams in 615 polling districts, drawn at random from all of Zambia’s 150 constituencies using a statistical method which was accepted internationally and proven to be accurate.

Labels: ELECTIONS, FODEP, GERSHOM MUSONDA

posted by MrK @ 6:55 AM