PF IN NDOLA BACK VOTER REGISTRATION EXTENSION
Members of the Patriotic Front (PF) party in Ndola have urged the Electoral Commission of Zambia to extend the voter registration exercise beyond the scheduled December 12 deadline.
It comes after opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema yesterday called for an indefinite extension to the registration period, claiming the current deadline was a PF ploy which risked disenfranchising millions of voters.
PF Ndola district chair Benjamin Chitondo told reporters that the exercise had so far not yielded the desired number of registered voters.
“A lot of people are still queuing up to register as voters and only 20 percent of eligible voters have so far managed to register because in a day most centers only managed to capture between 100 and 150 eligible voters,” he complained.
Mr Chitondo echoed HH’s calls for the ECZ to increase the number of registration kits in order to speed up the registration process and capture more voters.
Neither President Lungu, nor the PF’s central committee have yet joined in the call for an extension.
The ECZ has promised to register between 8.5 to 9 million Zambians in just 33 days, starting on November 9. Based on current projections the commission will only reach 3 million voters, leaving two-thirds of the electorate without a vote.