Maravi

PVT has been used in Zambia since 1991

PVT has been used in Zambia since 1991
By The Post
Thu 17 Mar. 2011, 04:00 CAT

Rupiah Banda has invited international observers from all over the world to come and observe this year’s elections. This is good and welcome because the practice of international election observing has been gaining increased acceptance all over the world as a result of the growing recognition of the potential positive contributions of international observers to an election process.

We all accept and recognise the fact that these international election observers have no juridical authority and probably that is why Rupiah had to invite them to come here. Why has Rupiah invited international observers to come and observe our elections? Rupiah needs to answer these questions honestly because his behaviour is very contradictory. On one hand, he is saying anyone, including international organisations, is welcome to observe the elections and yet on the other hand, he says no one except the Electoral Commission of Zambia is allowed to tally the results.

What kind of nonsense is this? What does he think the observers are coming to do in Zambia? If they are true observers, they are not coming here for a holiday but to see and observe whether the elections reflect the will of the people. Electoral fraud and irregularities are some of the more serious militants against the holding of elections that reflect the will of the people. It is fraudulent elections that lead to violence and disquiet and not free and fair elections.

It seems to us that Rupiah was quick to invite election observers in the hope that their mere coming would give credibility to the elections without them doing any serious work. This is what he seems to expect from them. Rupiah’s arguments on the process of parallel vote tabulation do not make any sense at all. It seems that in their desperation, they are even prepared to tell lies.

This is why they have no shame in declaring that parallel vote tabulation has never been done in Zambia when they know that nothing could be farther from the truth. This is why many of our people have difficulties accepting that our elections are ever held without fraud by the party in government. Rupiah and his minions want to be participants in the elections as well as referees. They want to do things their way to benefit themselves without caring about what the people want.

Rupiah’s lies about parallel vote tabulation are not difficult to disprove.

Fortunately for us, the Carter Centre of Emory University and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs who monitored our country’s 1991 elections which brought MMD into power have documented their experiences in a book entitled The October 31 1991 National Elections in Zambia. At page 66 of this book published in 1992, the monitors observed that they decided to use parallel vote tabulation as a means of monitoring the elections. They used a network of Zambians recruited specifically for this exercise to carry out a parallel tallying process. They observed that this process served as an important deterrent to fraud as it allowed international observers to verify officially announced results which arrangement was critical in the event of serious allegations of electoral manipulation.

It is interesting to note that even at that time, the ruling party UNIP, of which Rupiah was one of the most prominent leaders, objected to this. But the Carter Centre observes that Dr Kenneth Kaunda “…acted in a spirit of political tolerance and co-operation”. Dr Kaunda behaved in the way he did because he was not interested in fraud. When the results indicated that he had lost, he gracefully accepted the verdict of the people. He had no interest in manipulating the electoral results to frustrate the will of the people.

But this does not seem to be Rupiah’s mind. He seems determined to impose his will on our people. We say this because it does not make sense for one of the contestants in the election to be so vocal about blocking efforts that would render the election more transparent and acceptable to our people. There is a lot that is wrong with our electoral process. The advantages that are inbuilt for the ruling party make the process manifestly unfair. We all know that state resources including state-owned but government-controlled media organisations are commandeered to serve the personal interests of Rupiah. This alone makes it impossible for the election to be free and fair. And this is where credit and respect should be given to Dr Kaunda. When it was found that the state media that he came with from the one party state was under the control and management of elements that had difficulties to accept that the country had changed to a multi-party dispensation where the opposition had a role to play, Dr Kaunda did not resist the removal of such editors and journalists from the state-owned media and to replace them with those who were seen or thought to be fair to all the contestants. What we have today in our country, in this regard, is far worse than what we had at the end of the one party state.

But it now seems that Rupiah feels entitled to this uneven playing field in all aspects of the electoral process. This is why he can threaten people with criminal sanctions for merely trying to keep a tally of results that are declared by the Electoral Commission of Zambia and confirmed by all interested parties. The procedure of the Electoral Commission of Zambia is that no results are declared until they have been confirmed by representatives of the party present in a polling station, monitors and the presiding officers. Once this is done and the presiding officer declares the results for a particular polling station, that information becomes public. And no one should stop the public from colleting it and drawing the necessary inferences that the information demands. If one party has won, it does not require the Electoral Commission of Zambia to tell anyone that one party has won and another has lost when the results are already declared at every polling station. They Electoral Commission performs this formal function, but it does not mean that it is entitled to divert from the results that have been declared at various polling stations. And this is what our people fear. They are worried that it is possible for fraudulent state functionaries to try to tamper with election results by inputting figures that bear no relationship to the results declared at the polling stations. This is where parallel vote tabulation is helpful. But on a more positive note, parallel vote tabulation helps to increase the confidence of our people in the credibility of the election process. This can only be good for the winner as well as the loser in an election process because it avoids unnecessary controversy.

The lies that Rupiah and his friends are telling about parallel vote tabulation being new to this country are doing nothing to increase the confidence of our people in the election process. If anything, we continue to say that Rupiah’s behaviour is what is endangering the peace and stability of our country after the next elections and not the parallel vote tabulation. Parallel vote tabulation was used in this country in the landmark 1991 elections that brought MMD to power. What is wrong with it today? Why this hypocrisy? Why all these lies about it?

Labels: VOTERIGGING

posted by MrK @ 6:14 AM