ELECTIONS world over are recognised as a system for the peaceful arbitration of political rivalry and transfer of power.
In many instances, elections have actually proved totally destabilising to the extent of triggering conflict and violence when various stakeholders refuse to accept or agree on the outcome of the results.
In Africa especially, political parties backed by some civil society organisations in most instances run parallel voter tabulations which somehow tend to create some kind of anarchy before the mandated body, the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), announces official results.
Thus announcement by ECZ to demystify results is welcome news especially to the political parties and other interested parties that have complained about the manner results have been released in the past elections.
With only a few weeks left before the August 12 elections, the move is timely as all eyes will be on ECZ to monitor how efficient the electoral body will handle this year’s polls albeit the accuracy in the release of official results.
The pace at which ECZ has been releasing results in previous elections left much to be desired especially with instances where results would take more than 48 hours to be officially announced.
Such inefficiencies should be dealt with, more so that this year’s elections have roused so much interest not only from the locals but the international community as well.
The ECZ has many at times come under immense pressure from the various stakeholders who have gone the courts of law and cited gross irregularities and electoral malpractices on the part of the commission.
Among some allegations is that the ECZ is many at times compromised by the ruling party to release results in their favour.
This will therefore call on the various political parties and civil society organisations to sensitise how elections results for this year will be managed to ensure smooth flow as well as transparency.
Political parties and civil society should heed the call to field agents at all polling stations to ensure collection of correct results unlike what has been experienced in the past where some political parties and civil society would publish their own results before the ECZ verifies the results.
Thus the onus would largely fall on the political parties to ensure that they have agents at all polling stations so that they can be able to have access to correct results and be able to tally with other polling stations than sending wrong data or claiming to have won when in fact not.
In as much as all stakeholders would be waiting for actual announcements of results from the national tallying centres, the political parties would be in the clear to know how many votes they had amassed.
This would also greatly help avoid unnecessary fighting between political party carders as well as harassing ECZ officials who have in the past elections have fallen prey to beatings and victimisation over the delays to release results.
Political parties and the various stakeholders would do well to invest in training to ensure their agents at the polling stations are vested with the procedures that would be undertaken in the release of results to avoid unnecessary misinformation.
All this will eventually lead to Zambia having a credible election if all stakeholders participated in the process unlike leaving everything to the ECZ.
Stakeholders should take interest in the ongoing voter education on issues such as corruption, the voting process and other important election related matters, the engagement of stakeholders, was important for achieving a credible election.
It is every Zambian’s hope that the move by the ECZ to demystify the election results process will help deter fraud and manipulation of results.
But this would largely call for the ECZ to promote transparency in the entire electoral process by having considerable representation of opposition parties and stakeholders to monitor every stage of the electoral process effectively.