Maravi

ECZ can help prevent post-election violence

ECZ can help prevent post-election violence
By The Post
Wed 14 Sep. 2011, 14:00 CAT

THE responsibility to maintain peace and tranquility in the country is a shared one. We all have a duty to conduct ourselves in a way that does not threaten the peace of the nation. We have been very fortunate as a country that most of the 47 years of our independence have been free of internal strife.

Those that are old enough will remember that we lived through an extended period of external threat when Zambia supported liberation movements throughout the southern African region.

But even through that period, we managed to remain peaceful as a nation. Our politics were not always the best. But it cannot be denied that at that time, Zambia was led by a true patriot, our good friend comrade Kenneth Kaunda.

Whatever his failings may have been, it can and must be said of him that he loved this country. Whenever there was serious contention, comrade KK did everything to accommodate the wishes of the majority; he always respected the wishes of the people.

Even when this country was constitutionally a one-party state, comrade KK was very sensitive to public opinion and to what the people wanted.

He always said: "Who am I not to respect the wishes of the people?" Our comrade had serious reservations about returning to multiparty politics in 1990, but that was what the people wanted, and he respected their wishes without much ado, without sacrificing a single soul.

He seemed very clear in his mind that it was not possible to govern against the wishes of the people. This quality is clearly lacking in Rupiah Banda. He does not seem to have learnt much from the spirit and character of comrade KK, with whom he worked for many years.

As we head towards the elections, it is important that contentious issues are dealt with in a very level-headed manner. It does not help the peace and stability of our country for Rupiah to dismiss well-founded concerns raised by interested parties in this year's elections.

Rupiah has continued to defend Universal Print Group even when it has been proved that there is criminality in the way that this company operates. This newspaper has now produced sufficient documents to demonstrate that at the time the Electoral Commission of Zambia were awarding the contract for printing of ballot papers for next week's elections, there was proof that Universal Print Group had been involved in serious acts of corruption, bribery and money laundering at the Electoral Commission.

But for inexplicable reasons, this was ignored. And when this issue was raised with the Electoral Commission of Zambia, they seemed determined to ignore it. The question is why? The Anti Corruption Commission, being the state agency responsible for investigating corruption, decided to lie about what they knew regarding the criminal acts of Universal Print Group.

This has done nothing to increase the confidence of our people in the electoral process. It has created an unhealthy environment of mistrust, whose consequences should not be underestimated.

It is for this reason that we continue to call upon the Electoral Commission of Zambia to redeem itself by ensuring that confidence in the elections is maintained. This can only be done by ensuring that there is complete transparency in the process and all legitimate concerns of the participants are addressed. By failing to deal with the Universal Print Group problem in an inclusive, conclusive way, the Electoral Commission of Zambia has put itself in an awkward position.

It now requires the highest levels of humility and magnanimity on the part of the Electoral Commission of Zambia to ensure that our people are convinced that election results that will be announced next week reflect their will. This can only happen if the Electoral Commission of Zambia adopts a genuinely inclusive approach.

This will require that they conduct themselves in a way that does not give the impression that they are stooges of the government, of Rupiah and the MMD.

There are a number of concerns that have repeatedly been raised in the way that the Electoral Commission of Zambia conducts itself. In successive elections, they have allowed voting to go on in some areas beyond the time designated for holding such elections.

This is a matter that can be avoided by ensuring that everything is done to run the election in a transparent way. Where there are legitimate problems, those should be discussed with all the participants so that solutions that are deployed are agreed. Failing to do so feeds into the notion that this voting that goes on beyond the time that is designated is calculated to facilitate electoral fraud.

A related problem is the way in which the Electoral Commission of Zambia has previously dealt with the release of results. It seems to be that results for the areas where the opposition are strong are released first for no clear reason.

And after these results have been released, then somehow the MMD manages to win as results are released from some obscure polling stations. The unfortunate impression that this gives is that the results in the strongholds of the opposition are released first to allow the MMD to fraudulently tamper with the election in order to give themselves an undeserved win.

They are given the opportunity to know how much they are trailing and then an appropriate number of votes is illegitimately introduced in the system to give them the margin they need to win.

This is a problem that can be avoided by ensuring that results are released properly and not in a contrived way. This way of releasing results may have worked in 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2008, but it may not do this time.

There is even a more difficult problem this year because the opposition has now released information suggesting that Rupiah and his friends are determined to tamper with the election in specified areas - Mwansabombwe in Luapula Province, Southern Province and Eastern Province, among other areas. These perceptions and developments are a serious risk to the peace and stability of our country.

It is therefore incumbent upon the Electoral Commission of Zambia to ensure that everything is done to protect the votes of our people and that more is done to reassure our people that the criminality of Universal Print Group will not be allowed to tamper with the election results.

This is a very difficult and complex situation in which the Electoral Commission of Zambia has placed itself. However, it is still very important that everything is done to protect and preserve our peace. This will not happen if the Electoral Commission of Zambia continues to ignore stakeholders. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that we are special and those countries that have degenerated into chaos are not.

If we fail to deal with the problems that are staring at us, we are inviting bigger ones. Let us not create a situation or environment which even we ourselves will soon be afraid of. The Universal Print Group problem, if not properly handled, could plunge this country into veritable chaos for which all the facilitators of this process will be answerable. So many mistakes have already been made in the way this matter has been handled that valuable space that could have enabled the Electoral Commission of Zambia to handle this matter better has been lost.

That said, it may still be possible to avoid the doomsday scenario by ensuring that the whole election process is fully transparent, and all the stakeholders, including the MMD, are treated as such - just stakeholders. What has been happening so far is that the MMD seems to have the ears of the Electoral Commission of Zambia to the exclusion of all other political players.

That situation in combination with the dodgy character of the printer of ballot papers, Universal Print Group, is an explosive mix that should not be underestimated. It does not cost much to talk to other people and bring them on board. If we have post-election violence in this country, the Electoral Commission of Zambia will have to take full responsibility because there are things they can do to prevent the result that will be announced next week from being rejected.

One of those small things, as we indicated earlier, is simply to announce the results properly and not in a way that gives the impression that funny calculations are being done in some backroom somewhere.

Justice Irene Mambilima, the chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Zambia, has a big job to do. We hope she will do it transparently.

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS, ECZ, VOTERIGGING

posted by MrK @ 5:21 PM