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TIZ advises ECZ not to gag media from disseminating poll results

TIZ advises ECZ not to gag media from disseminating poll results
By Namatama Mundia
Fri 12 Feb. 2010, 03:50 CAT

THE Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) should not gag the private media in disseminating already declared results at polling station and constituency level, Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) has said.

Making a submission to the parliamentary committee on legal affairs, governance, human rights, and gender matters on Wednesday, TIZ executive director Goodwell Lungu said the ECZ should not restrain the private media from informing the public on already declared results because it fuels unnecessary suspicions.

“We have in the past noted with concerns the inordinate delays in announcing election results which are earlier officially declared by the returning officers,” he said. “We strongly recommend to ECZ to devise the fastest ways of announcing results.”

Lungu said the declaration of a winner in an election should not be rushed because it gives rise to unnecessary suspicions.

“We recommend that all queries should be cleared before declaring the winner. The law should be amended to provide for such,” he said.

Lungu urged the ECZ and law enforcement agencies not to pretend that the current laws were not adequate in dealing with election malpractices.

“What we see lacking is action in enforcing such laws,” he said.

Lungu said political parties must actively participate in combating electoral corruption.

He said the ECZ should make full disclosure of all election logistics and declassify the electoral registers from being confidential.

Lungu said it was necessary for the ECZ to enforce the corrective mechanisms on media coverage, especially the bias in particular the public media, which is publicly owned.

On issuance of national registration cards, Lungu submitted that the decision to start the registration exercises on June 1, 2009 in Eastern, North-Western and Western provinces fell short of credible criterion on how the provinces were arrived at.

“Such a decision also hardly made economic justification. It would have been prudent for the government to publicise the plan clearly indicating among others how many citizens they had targeted to issue NRCs to and the duration for each province,” he said.

Lungu said the use of traditional chiefs to campaign for parties has been common in the past elections, contrary to the Electoral Code of Conduct.

He added that TIZ’s media monitoring captured a lot of chiefs in the media openly declaring their support to preferred candidates, contrary to the electoral Act.

“These are the instances that make the exercises of strengthening the law in futility if compliance is extremely low by key stakeholders but much effort needs to be focused on enforcement,” Lungu said.

Responding to Kasama Central member of parliament Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba who claimed that the public media was biased and only gave coverage to the opposition on negative things and not positives, Lungu said it was true that certain public media were biased.

Lungu said there was need to come up with a monitoring body which would be bold in ensuring that fair coverage was given especially by organisations like Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC), where people were required by law to contribute K3,000 monthly.

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS, ECZ, GOODWELL LUNGU, TIZ

posted by MrK @ 3:42 PM