Maravi

Electoral Act needs overhaul - AVAP

Electoral Act needs overhaul - AVAP
By Chibaula Silwamba
Sat 13 Nov. 2010, 04:01 CAT

BONNIE Tembo yesterday called for the complete overhaul of the electoral Act to ensure free, fair and credible elections next year, saying the current law has a lot of gaps.

In an interview, Tembo, who is executive director for the Anti Voter Apathy Project (AVAP), said the electoral Act of 1996 must be reviewed as opposed to having piecemeal changes.

“The current electoral Act is anchored on the 1996 amended Constitution. Therefore, you cannot dream to have free, fair and credible elections under a defective constitution. So to us as AVAP, we are appealing to government to sit up and we are saying,enough is enough!” Tembo said.

“Zambians want to have proper elections next year and if they still want to use the same constitution, it means they have a hidden agenda. What should happen now is to have a complete overhaul of the entire electoral law, not just the Electoral Code of Conduct because the Electoral Code of Conduct can easily be abused. In fact, they MMD are known to be abusing the Electoral Code of Conduct. Therefore, it is very cosmetic and doesn’t add any value. We want the electoral law itself.”

Tembo said there was need to step up advocacy campaigns to ensure that the government was compelled to give Zambians a new constitution.

He said Zambians could not afford to spend billions of kwacha on a constitution-making process only to have the Constitution after the elections.

“We are appealing to President Rupiah Banda, as much as he is flying around to Namibia and everywhere to find time to ask Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Angola and other countries on how they hold elections? How are the electoral laws put in place so that we speed up our process?” he added. “Our democracy is still under siege and that is the siege we are talking about.”

He said the country did not have direction on the electoral process because the law was inadequate.

“We cannot afford the luxury of having a simple majority president; we want the 50 per cent plus one to be enshrined in the Constitution. We want the independence of the Electoral Commission of Zambia clearly stipulated in the Constitution. We want the chairperson of the ECZ to be the returning officer for presidential elections; not the chief justice who hears the petitions,” said Tembo.

“We would like the playing field to be levelled. There are a number of issues which we want to be reviewed because the current electoral Act has so many gaps.”

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS, AVAP, BONNIE TEMBO, ELECTORAL ACT OF 1996

posted by MrK @ 8:13 PM