TIZ urges parties to take lead in voters registration campaigns

TIZ urges parties to take lead in voters registration campaigns
By George Chellah
Mon 04 Oct. 2010, 04:01 CAT

TRANSPARENCY International Zambia (TIZ) executive director Goodwell Lungu yesterday said political parties should be in the forefront of encouraging their members to register as voters. In an interview, Lungu urged political parties to mobilise their members for the voter registration exercise.

There is need for parties to ensure that their members take advantage of the extension and register as voters. Firstly, they should obtain National Registration Cards (NRCs) and then register as voters as well, Lungu said.

And ourselves as Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) we wish to encourage the general public to get NRCs and register as voters. It will be important that next year's elections reflect the will of the majority of people.

Lungu said it would not help for people to get discouraged from registering as voters because of the various factors at play.

Political parties should invest heavily in the voter registration process. They will have to make sure that by the time they start campaigning, most of their members are already registered as voters, Lungu said. During campaigns it will be difficult to get people to register, it will be too late. Political parties should be in the forefront of encouraging their members to register as voters.

Lungu said their expectations from political parties concerning the voter registration exercise have not been met.

What we expected was members of parliament and councillors to go back to various wards and constituencies to encourage the electorate to register as voters. And also we want the government to complement the various political parties by projecting the number of NRCs that they earmarked to give to each district, Lungu said, For example, they should be able to give information that for instance that for Lusaka the projected number of NRCs to issue is 10,000 or 20,000. They should give that information to public. From the time the issuance of NRCs started the government has not given out information on the actual projects for example, the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) has given us those projections per province as well as nationwide.

We feel it helps in terms of planning and understanding by the public. But the government has not done the same projections on the part of the issuance of NRCs.