By GIDEON NYENDWA
It is shocking to get a zero from a polling station where my family, some party officials and I voted from, losing Democratic Party (DP) candidate in the just ended Kabwata by-election Fred Mubanga has said.
And DP president Harry Kalaba said it was a scandal to have a person who voted for himself, his and some party officials to get zero at the polling station where they voted from.
Mr Kalaba said that what happened to their candidate was clear proof that the outcome of the Kabwata by-election did not reflect the will of the people.
Mr Kalaba said that he personally asked Mr Mubanga if the ballot paper that he got was valid and stamped which he confirmed, that it was.
He said the electoral system in Zambian was very porous and needed to be worked on urgently because if this kind of thing continued it would land the country in a mess.
Mr Kalaba said that electoral reforms were needed so that people could be getting results that were a true reflection of what they wanted.
And Mr Mubanga said that when the results from Libala Secondary School where he voted came out, people who voted for him started calling in shock to why he got a zero when they actually voted for him.
He said that if his vote was not counted one would wonder how many of the votes were not count edfrom other polling stations.
Meanwhile, the Christian Churches Monitoring Group programme manager Peter Mwanangombe said that they had monitors in all the polling stations and could confirm that the counting process was done in a transparent manner.
Mr Mwanangombe further advised the aggrieved candidate to follow the right channels to lodge his complaint.
And when contacted the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) said that this commission could not issue a statement at the moment.
ECZ public relations manager Patricia Luhanga said that the commission needed to go back to the statistics for the particular polling station before they could state their position on the matter.
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