By SILUMESI MALUMO
THE chaotic voter registration exercise is meant to disadvantage the opposition, UPND spokesperson Charles Kakoma has charged.
A PF official, Lemmy Bwalya has however warned the ruling party to watch out with the current trends in the voter registration exercise.
Mr Bwalya said having analysed the new system the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) had adopted, which allows citizens to register from anywhere and choose where to vote from, UPND would easily take advantage of the system.
Mr Kakoma accused the ECZ of having planned to create confusion by coming up with the new register.
He said yesterday that there were numerous challenges during the registration process mainly in the opposition strongholds.
Mr Kakoma said that in Zambezi people were not obtaining the voter’s card because the ink had run out.
“I received a call from Zambezi in the North-Western Province that the ECZ had run out of ink after only registering 35 voters on the first day of the exercise.
“How did the ECZ dispatch officers from Lusaka to Zambezi, a distance of 1, 200 kilometres which is almost the same distance from Lusaka to Johannesburg, with ink to last one day when they knew that the officers will be out for 30 days?” he wondered.
He said it was shocking that the ECZ could plan to conduct the voter registration exercise and buy malfunctioning machines to undertake the exercise without testing them.
Mr Kakoma added: “We have also received reports of the exercise being disrupted by Zesco load shedding despite ECZ buying gensets. Is it true that the gensets procured by ECZ were faulty?”
But Mr Bwalya, the PF aspiring candidate for the Lusaka provincial chairmanishp, urged the current interim provincial chairman, Paul Moonga to do a random check in many registration centres.
“You will learn that UPND has taken this issue seriously, hence ferrying people from as far as Gwembe, Chikankata, Choma, Monze etc to be captured here in Lusaka and some other areas, just to make sure that, they don’t leave anyone behind in the voting next year,” he said.
ECZ creating confusion, says UPND
