Voter confidence has been eroded, says Bishop Chihana

Voter confidence has been eroded, says Bishop Chihana
Written by Mwala Kalaluka
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 8:36:11 AM

POLITICIANS that steal votes from the rightful winner will not enjoy their rest or the spoils they get because God hates injustice, International Fellowship of Christian Churches (IFCC) president Bishop Simon Chihana has observed.

Bishop Chihana yesterday said that whoever was used to doing such evil during elections shall never enjoy their liberty.

“Zambia’s young democracy is being tried and threatened by those who should be champions of the same democracy. These are using a multiple well-calculated ways of manipulating the voters’ rights,” he said.

“It is much clear therefore, that voter confidence has been eroded from the Zambian people, through voter malpractice, electoral fraud, and a bad and non-visible electoral process, intimidation of voters, failure by equipping election monitors, failure of financing political party monitors, manipulation of figures and curtailing of results,”

Bishop Chihana observed further that the history of Dr Kenneth Kaunda’s one party participatory democracy was fast repeating itself following the dictatorial tendencies that were creeping into the governance process.

“If Dr Kaunda’s one party participatory was one form of dictatorship then the current wave of democracy is no different from it because it is determined to make the voices of the opposition political parties to be quiet by not allowing them to be covered in the public media but thank God that we have some strong uncompromising private media that have been able to cover them,” he said. “The smell of dictatorship is just before our noses, whereby we see the will and the right of the people being denied in our presence. We first saw the army commander threatening innocent voters who are civilians with words that are only uttered to citizens by military dictators.”

Bishop Chihana noted that another source of concern was the level of interference in the country’s sovereignty by some developed nations during elections.

“Please let the Zambians determine their own destiny without interference,” he said. “I want to humbly advice us that we need to protect our peace and unity by being sincere with ourselves and learn to allow the will of the people to prevail. If Mr. (Rupiah) Banda won, why did we not see or hear about half the nation rejoice over his victory, or at least some pockets of people in various parts of the nation.”

Bishop Chihana further urged the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) to learn to protect the electoral process and restore confidence in the process.