ECZ TO DELIBERATELY SLOW REGISTRATION PROCESS IN ALL UPND STRONGHOLDS
Information from multiple sources in both the Electoral Commission of Zambia and the Patriotic Front indicate that the additional four days of registration will be deliberately slowed down to ensure as few people as possible are captured in the process. The ECZ has identified Lusaka, Copperbelt, Western, North Western and Southern Provinces as areas that should be targeted for sabotage, revealed the sources.
“Registration centres will experience all kind of artificial problems like lack of network, feigning sickness of registration officials, lack of transport to deliver officers and materials from one point to the other, breakdown of machines and generally the PF agents will ensure they take their time in the process. These people are extremely desperate and evil and the only way to check these schemes is to ensure that affected people immediately and without wasting time expose these schemes to their party officials. People must make a lot of noise”, said the source.
The ECZ Chief Registration officer Patrick Shindano yesterday announced that the Commission had extended the registration period by four days. A day earlier PF surrogate Andrew Ntewewe had appealed that the registration process should only be given an extra four days and not more than that. Currently the law stipulates that registration of voters is a continuous process, but ECZ has ignored the statute.