NOMINATION fees are non-refundable and not transferable, Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) Public Relations Manager Patricia Luhanga has said.
Ms Luhanga said the nomination fees that can- didates aspiring for the Presidency were paying were not refundable. This follows demands by All People’s Congress Party (APC) leader Nason Msoni that ECZ immediately re- funds him the K95, 000 he paid as nomination fees following his failure to file his nomination. 20 Presidential candi- dates had paid nomination fees while 16 had success- fully filed-in their Nomina- tions.
And Patriots for Eco- nomic Progress (PeP) president Sean Tembo has said ECZ should immedi- ately refund the four pres- idential candidates whose nominations were not successful their K95, 000 which each paid, without any delay.
Mr Tembo said ECZ structured its nomination process upside down by first collecting a payment before verifying that a can- didate has satisfied the other requirements.
“The standard operating procedure for any decent organisation is to first con- firm that a customer has satisfied all the other re- quirements before collect- ing a payment from such a customer,” Mr Tembo said.
He said any refusal or reluctance by the ECZ to refund the four unsuccess- ful presidential candidates
will amount to extortion. Mr Tembo said there was no basis whatsoever, whether legal, moral or otherwise, why the ECZ should keep money paid by unsuccessful presiden-
tial candidates.
“We wish to remind the
commissioners that make up ECZ that Zambians in particular and the world at large have very high ex- pectations of their moral standing and integrity. Any refusal to refund these unsuccessful presidential candidates will serious- ly undermine the stand- ing of the Commission in the eyes of right-thinking members of the public,” he said.
Mr Tembo said it would be extremely regrettable if ECZ is seen to be running a “Ponzi scheme” in the manner that they managed the presidential nomina- tion process.
