POLITICAL Party presidents yesterday attended the presidential summit organised by the Electoral Commission of Zambia.
The venue was Mulungushi International Conference Centre and the summit gave a synopsis of tension as the country prepare for the 2021 polls.
President Edgar Lungu was present at the ‘high-level’ meeting.
Most of the presidential hopefuls raised issues on this or that electoral issue, except for downcast PF president Lungu who remained ‘taut’ in his seat – throughout the meeting.
UNIP president Tilyenji Kaunda said Electoral Commission of Zamia (ECZ) commissioners must do more listening and work on earning the trust of the nation.
He believes by so doing, there would be avoidance of the Malawi and Kenya scenarios, “where presidential elections ended up being nullified for irregularities.”
Tilyenji also complained about the “too high” nomination fees.
“They are still too high, unreasonable and unacceptable to the majority of Zambians. Why should the ECZ insist on excluding the majority of Zambians from competing for elective office, by this unjust measure?” said Tilyenji.
National Democratic Congress (NDC) president Chishimba Kambwili ‘adopted’ Tilyenji’s submission on nomination.
He, however, noted that his area of concern was the ECZ’s target to capture nine million voters within 30 days.
“The current register was compiled in 2005, 2011 and 2016 and [it] captured a total of six million voters. How then can they in 2020, when the population has grown, capture the same nine million people in 30 days? Colleagues, electoral process brings problems if elements of arrogance, not listening from stakeholders take root,” Kambwili said. “Let us have elections that are going to stand a test of time, by doing the right thing. What we are asking for is enough time for the Zambians to register as voters. This is not debatable! How can you capture people that were captured in nine months, in one month? This issue must be resolved or else this country will be on fire.”
ECZ commissioner Ali Simwinga, on the issue of nomination fees, said: “we met on three occasions over this matter.”
“The Electoral Commission did engage you our stakeholders over this issue. We did give reasons why we felt there was need to review nomination fees…So, to request the Commission to go back and start reviewing a matter that was comprehensively discussed and shared, we’ll be asking a bit too much [from] the Commission,” Simwinga said. “It means we will not move forward. It is a bad management principle to continuously review a decision when you have taken a position.”
He added that the Commission respected Kambwili’s views that it was impossible to capture nine million voters under a month.
Simwinga, however, insisted that the ECZ’s target, “as provided to us by the statistics office,” is that eligible voters stood at nine million.
“If none of you, by some misfortune, decide not to come forward and register, that is unfortunate,” Simwinga said. “If five million can vote in one day, how can we fail to capture nine million people (prospective voters) in 30 days? I would like to appeal to you that the voters we are talking about are your members.”
He said it was the duty of political parties to encourage as many people as possible to queue at polling stations to register as voters.
“Those are your clients; they are not our clients. The more people you encourage to vote, the better for you as our political leaders,” said Simwinga.
“So, we are confident…We think that if we worked together with you, that number can even be exceeded.”
UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema, in his intervention, said: “we need to know that this meeting is not to consent to issues that have been presented by the Electoral Commission.”
He noted that there was lack of consensus on a number of fundamental issues.
“NRCs – we can’t say NRCs are not important because you can’t be a voter without an NRC. And ECZ can’t say that’s an area outside its domain. Yes, it’s true but it’s a fundamental, logical process. We disagree with what’s going on [the issuance of] NRCs,” Hichilema said. “The current voter register is legally correct and it provides for how you can remove a voter. A dead person is provided for!”
He argued that people cannot be talking about dead people as a reason for a new voters’ register.
“That is misleading the nation! The number of days allocated for registration of voters; we disagree on that. The law says there should be continuous voter registration,” Hichilema noted.
“So, we can’t say here that we have been given a brief and it’s agreed. It’s not agreed!”
Hichilema regretted that compliance to existing laws was at the worst, before, during and after elections.
“What we saw in Lukashya where cash and mealie meal are distributed on the queues. DMMU (Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit) is being used as a department of a political party!” Hichilema said.
He said political violence compromises elections.
Hichilema underscored that yesterday’s meeting could not be a decision point.
“This forum must accept that we need a separate time with the Electoral Commission, with the Minister of Home Affairs on [national] registration. To that effect, we have written to the Electoral Commission, we have written to home affairs and other departments,” Hichilema said.
“We need time to discuss and not [being given] an instruction.”
After the meeting, Hichilema accused the ECZ of issuing orders, instead of engaging in dialogue, consultation.
He told journalists that ECZ officials needed to realise that they worked for Zambians.
“[But] they work for us. We don’t work for the ECZ. That’s the fundamental flaw. You can see the collusion with surrogate political parties trying to sing a chorus even before the song is called out,” Hichilema said. “They’re singing nothing! This is what is causing problems and if they don’t address this issue, this country will never have a free and fair election in 2021 and therefore, this meeting to us was really a passing time.”
Hichilema believes that the substance would be: “when we meet the Electoral Commission of Zambia to look at the issues we are raising – legal issues in there, procedural issues, regulatory issues. Things that are wrong!”
“For example, there’s no way the Electoral Commission can say they are not concerned about how the National Registration Cards are being issued. You cannot be a voter without having a NRC. What the NRC mobile process is doing, the five provinces in phase one, they issued NRCs to everyone who was eligible. Under phase two in the other five provinces, they are not issuing NRCs. So they’re disenfranchising voters,” he stressed.
Hichilema said ECZ needs to be interested in those issues “otherwise they cannot register the nine million voters they’re projecting”.
“If not, you’ll have a skewed voters’ register and that is rigging an election and you cannot suggest in here that we must not say those things. If we say them, we are alarming people. We are not alarming anybody! There must be rule of law. This is a sham of a meeting,” he said. “We are saying the questions have not been answered. The ECZ came to issue an instruction like we are a grade four class. We are not a grade four class session. Even grade four class session, the pupils are respected because the pupils’ questions are answered by the teacher.”
Hichilema added: “in this case you can see the draconian nature of the Electoral Commission.”
“They must work within the law. The law is very clear. You cannot remove six million registered voters because the electoral process Act does not allow that,” Hichilema said. “They talk of dead people as though after the new register is made, no one will die. You can register in the morning, in the afternoon you are dead. I mean, it’s such a senseless, lack of logical argument they are making.”
Hichilema said the process of removing the dead was different; it’s not about a new register.
“This is so crude, so unrealistic. They must do better and we will get them to do better because that’s their job,” said Hichilema.
And Kambwili also told journalists that: “by the way, what has shocked me in this meeting is that they seem to be coming up, all this register, the registration online based on Bill 10.”
“You heard they said we must support Bill 10 in order to do delimitation. But they are basing their registration and delimitation on Bill 10. Supposing that Bill 10 doesn’t go through? Because it’s in Parliament!” said Kambwili. “So everything they’re doing there is not supported by any legal provision. You cannot assume that Bill 10 will go through. Supposing Bill 10 doesn’t go through, what happens to delimitation? What a joke of the Electoral Commission of Zambia!”
Golden Party Zambia (GPZ) president Jackson Silavwe reminded the ECZ the need to be very careful when handling electoral issues.
“The number of issues that the Commission has highlighted, which have been branded as consultations, and I want to disagree. I’m speaking from an informed position because I have been part of those meetings. There have been no consultations; they have just been a monologue,” he said. “As a Commission you are not listening. You are talking to us but you are not listening to us. You need to adopt a posture of conversation. Talking is good but listening is better.”
Silavwe accused the ECZ of being defensive in its presentations.
“There is no need for you to be defensive. Instead of having this defensive posture, can we have a posture where we are generating more consensus,” submitted Silavwe. “There has never been consensus generated on online voter registration, on the nomination fees, on prisoners’ rights to vote.”
Rainbow Party leader Wynter Kabimba opened his discourse with banter, asking President Lungu over a wedding cake.
“First let me recognise the presence of His Excellency. Your Excellency, how are you, sir? I have an issue with you because you didn’t give me a cake from your daughter’s (Tasila) wedding. But that we’ll talk later,” he said.
Kabimba asked all stakeholders who attended the meeting to commit themselves to giving and lending support to the ECZ for it to conduct and manage free and fair elections in Zambia.
“That must be a duty for all stakeholders. What is happening, Mr chairman, and I want to adopt the statement from president of the FDD, is that we the stakeholders that are supposed to lend support to the ECZ are taking our politics into the corridors of the ECZ,” he noted. “ECZ is not a political party. It is an autonomous institution under our Constitution [mandated] to run, manage and administer our elections.”
Kabimba continued: “the collateral point to that, Mr chairman, and I want to make this proposal in the presence of His Excellency, the President, that it is high time and I want to create this parallel.”
“One of the things that makes the judiciary all over the world independent, is that when you make a reckless statement against the judiciary, if you say things like, the judges are corrupt, the Constitutional Court judges are corrupt, a High Court judge is corrupt, the court on its own motion, will summon you to go and substantiate your allegations,” Kabimba explained. “If you don’t you are in contempt of court and you should be locked up. That is what makes the Judiciary to be respected. Maybe it’s high time that we have such an offence to cover the Electoral Commission of Zambia; that if you make a reckless statement, Mr chairman, like we have heard on many radio stations, that the Electoral Commission of Zambia in collaboration with a political party, in particular the Patriotic Front want to rig the 2021 election, surely you must be summoned by appropriate authorities to go and substantiate those allegations.”
He referred to the Rwanda genocide, saying it started from reckless statements.
“‘This country will be on fire, there will be chaos in this country, there will be this and this in this country.’ The people are listening out there. The wretched of the earth that have no access to literature and they take our words as leaders as being the truth. This cannot continue, Your Excellency,” said Kabimba, with focus on President Lungu. “I think it is high time, that as the government, you brought this thing which I personally refer to as indiscipline to an end. It is undermining the Commission.”
But MMD vice-president Reverend Reuben Sambo said the MMD comments were in public domain.
“Maybe we are the ones being referred to as the ones who make statements and we need to be summoned. And I have to confirm that we have been to the police and given our statements,” Rev Sambo responded.
He said the ECZ presentation had left many questions and answers.
Rev Sambo accused the ECZ of over-reliance on assumption more than pragmatic paths.
“The issue of voters who are on the register being captured… By your own statement, we are supposed to remove 1.4 million from about six million, which leaves us with 4.6 million. There’s no clear path, in our view, to how we gonna get to the estimated 8.8 [million voters in the new register],” he said.
Rev Sambo also asked about prisoner voters.
“We don’t know how many prisoners are in custody right now and given the idea that we go by 50 plus one [vote], just one vote can change everything. If we don’t know what we are doing with prisoners, how do we even proceed?” Rev Sambo asked.
He stressed that while Zambia had registered six million voters, the country has never recorded five million votes.
“[I have] four moral questions to the ECZ; do you believe that the undertakings that you are engaged [in] right now are indeed in national interest – is that really your position? Can the Commission call out erring players, censure them and even punish them?” he asked. “In other words, do you really feel that you are the kind of people that can call us out if we are wrong on both sides of the divide, whether it’s the ruling party or we in the opposition? Can you do it, because that’s where it comes down to? Are you able; do you feel the moral capacity to do so?”
Rev Sambo continued asking: “is the Commission capable of acting without emotion against us, stakeholders?”
“Do you feel that you are ready to discharge your responsibility to deliver a free and fair election in 2021?” asked Rev Sambo.
Towards the end of the session, as the ECZ read out what it deemed the meeting’s summary.
At this point, Silavwe asked for an opportunity to clarify issues.
But the ECZ objected, saying time had run out.
Nonetheless, Silavwe insisted to speak.
“It’s actually a rider to your word that you gave out. So, unless you are overruling your word, chairperson…. Seriously, you alluded to the fact that those, I think Dr Kambwili there, there was a response and he had a right of reply – you said that will be given,” said Silavwe. “Personally, as well there are issues that commissioner [ECZ vice-chairperson Dr Emily] Sikazwe brought out that I need to respond to. It’s important, because if we leave it like that, it shows that it is true.”
But ECZ officials, one after another, objected, still stressing that the meeting had to close by 12:00 hours.
At that point, Hichilema intervened and said: “that’s inappropriate, Mr chair.”
“You made a summary, we don’t agree. After this you issue a statement that presidents agreed to your summary! You left some things! President Silavwe has the right to say something. That’s the dialogue we are talking about,” said Hichilema.
“What you are doing is not dialogue; it’s an instruction.”
But ECZ chairperson judge Esau Chulu went ahead to close the meeting, as if he did not hear any objections.
Judge Chulu claimed that the ECZ remained committed and resolved to walking with everyone, leading up to the August 2021 general elections.
He hoped to build upon yesterday’s summit and embrace dialogue, as the vehicle for conducting electoral processes.
“The Commission is proud to be associated with the management of peaceful and credible elections in the region and indeed, on the continent. And it is our wish to maintain that status,” said judge Chulu.
Earlier, chief electoral officer Patrick Nshindano shared with the stakeholders details of the 2016 audited voters’ register.
He said such an audit was done to remove deceased voters from the registry and to eliminate potential duplications.
Nshindano caused a scare when struggled through his presentation and ‘collapsed’ mid his address.