SANF 06 No 82
Zambia faces a litmus test on 28 September when it rolls out a computerised voter registration system and assesses its compliance with regional electoral principles and guidelines.
The country will use a new computerised voter registration system for the first time. The system uses “biometrics”, that is, fingerprints, palm prints or iris scans to provide an accurate identification and verification of a voter.
About 3.9 million voters will cast their ballots in tripartite elections in which they will choose the country’s president, members of the National Assembly and council representatives.
Figures from the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) show an almost equal split between the numbers of female and male voters, with 1.99 million women having registered to vote in the 150 constituencies being contested against 1.94 million men.
The constituencies with the largest number of registered voters are all in the capital, Lusaka, with Mandevu constituency having 82,601 voters, followed by Munali constituency with 81,254.
Matero constituency, also in Lusaka, has 73,307 voters while 66,983 people are expected to cast their ballots in Kanyama constituency. Kanyama is also in Lusaka.
Analysis by province, however, shows the Copperbelt having the highest number of registered voters. There are a total of 625,505 eligible voters in the mineral-rich province, which is the economic backbone of Zambia.
Lusaka province follows with 592,551 voters while Southern province has 503,221 people allowed to vote.
Thirteen political parties have fielded candidates for the elections to be conducted at over 6,000 polling stations.
According to the ECZ, contesting parties are Agenda for Change, All People’s Congress Party, Direct Democracy Movement, Heritage Party, Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), National Democracy Party, New Generation Party, National Democratic Focus, Patriotic Front (PF), Reform Party, United Democratic Alliance (UDA), United Liberal Party and Zambia Conservative Party.
The UDA is an alliance of the United Party for National Development (UPND), Forum for Democracy and Development and Zambia’s first post-independence ruling party, the United National Independence Party.
The UPND is strong in the south of Zambia. It won 49 parliamentary seats in the last elections held in 2001 while UNIP got 13 seats.
President Levy Mwanawasa’s MMD is popular in Lusaka and central Zambia. It got 69 seats in the last polls.
Only five parties have fielded presidential candidates. The candidates are President Mwanawasa, UDA’s Hakainde Hichilema, PF’s Michael Sata, Heritage Party’s Godfrey Miyanda, and All People’s Congress’ Winright Ngondo.
Mwanawasa is seeking a second term of office after assuming power from Frederick Chiluba in 2001.
The Zambian polls will be another test of southern Africa’s electoral principles and guidelines agreed by Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders in Mauritius in 2004.
Zambia is the fifth country in which the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Elections will be used to assess the conduct of the polls. Other member states where the guidelines have already been used are Mauritius, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The SADC electoral guidelines are a non-legally binding electoral tool that was approved by Heads of State and Government at the regional body’s summit in Mauritius in 2004.
Under the guidelines, SADC Member States have agreed to guarantee the full participation of all their citizens in their country’s political processes.
This includes, among others, the need for political tolerance; regular intervals for elections as provided for by the respective national Constitutions; equal opportunity for all political parties to access the state media; and equal opportunity to exercise the right to vote and be voted for.
A 41-member SADC Electoral Observer Mission, which was launched on 21 September, has deployed teams to observe the conduct of the electoral process in Zambia’s nine provinces.
The teams will assess whether the political parties and electoral administrators are adhering to the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, a regional instrument for assessing polls that was adopted by SADC leaders in 2004.
The SADC observer mission is led by the United Republic of Tanzania’s Minister for Good Governance, Philip Marmo.
