Greetings fellow citizens, and thank you for joining us for the first of our weekly updates from
our 2021 Elections Project. As some of you may know, we launched our Elections Project two
weeks ago on the 16th of April, with the overall goal of the project being To promote
transparency, accountability and integrity in the electoral process in Zambia.
In line with this goal, we have kickstarted our elections-related interventions in earnest, and over
the next three and half months leading up to the 12th August elections, we will be giving you
these regular updates, each of which will highlight different observations and concerns that we
are seeing in the electoral process. But crucially, our updates will also put the spotlight on any
good practices that we see from different political players and other stakeholders involved in the
electoral process in order to encourage transparency, accountability and integrity within the
process. Ultimately, through these updates, we are hoping to play a key role in raising civic
awareness around different aspects of the electoral process in order to give all stakeholders
involved in the process – including the electorate – sufficient information to enable them make
informed decisions.
For our update today, we will focus on four key issues that have caught our attention over the
last several weeks and these are corruption in the political party adoption processes; abuse of
state resources; giving out money to the public; and the recent electoral violence at the Patriotic
Front (PF) headquarters.
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- Corruption in the adoption processes
TI-Z is disappointed that the ongoing intra-party adoption of candidates for parliamentary and
local government elections in the major political parties, most notably the Patriotic Front (PF)
and the United Party for National Development (UPND), have been marred with elements of
electoral malpractice such as vote buying or other forms of inducement designed to influence
party structures at different levels into favouring and ultimately adopting particular candidates.
As TI-Z, we strongly condemn these and any other forms of corruption within political parties
since corrupt political parties can only form corrupt governments. The occurrences we have
seen during intra-party adoptions call for urgent corrective action from the decision-making
organs within political parties in order to stamp out corruption from political parties. TI-Z believes
that a corrupt-free electoral process at party level can enhance democracy, transparency and
accountability at national level, and we challenge all political parties to stand up and be counted
in this regard. - Abuse of state resources
Based on the precedence we have seen from previous elections, the use of state resources by
those with access to those resources has always stood out as a big anomaly and one that
always attracts discontent from many stakeholders within the electoral process. TI-Z would like
to challenge public officials to change this narrative for this year’s electoral process. We
therefore call upon all public officials at all levels of our governance structure to resist the
temptation of abusing their positions through distributing state resources with a view to coercing
voters and therefore giving the party in government an unfair advantage over other political
parties who do not have access to state resources. The PF, being the party in government, has a
greater obligation over this and we urge them to rise to the challenge. Now is not the time to
suddenly arise from slumber and implement massive empowerment programmes since this
could potentially coerce or influence voters and ultimately undermine the integrity of our
electoral process. - Giving out money to the public
The Electoral Process Act No 35 of 2016 clearly defines the offering of money or gifts to voters
as an electoral offence. TI-Z is therefore gravely concerned about what has been happening
over the last several months, where senior government and ruling party officials have been
engaged in the practice of dishing out stacks of money and other gifts to the electorate under
the guise of empowering citizens or indeed as an accepted practice in our political process.
Related to this, recent sentiments from a senior leader of the PF to the effect that elections in
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Zambia cannot be won without giving out money are not only unfortunate but also an assault on
the integrity of our electoral process because they attempt to justify electoral corruption and to
pass it off as something that is normal. As TI-Z, we wish to strongly emphasize that there is
nothing normal about corruption and we strongly condemn any attempt to normalize the scourge
in any way, shape or form. We urge the general public to be on high alert and report any
candidate engaging in such illegalities to relevant authorities. - Electoral violence at PF Headquarters
The incident of electoral violence which occurred at the PF Secretariat on Saturday 1st May
2021 during the return of Mr. Chishimba Kabwili to the PF is a serious indication of the decaying
political landscape in Zambia. Electoral violence should not be tolerated in any way, shape or
form and we are concerned that what happened at the PF Secretariat on Saturday could be a
very worrying prelude of what is to come when the official campaign period starts. If political
parties can exhibit this level of aggression within their own structures, one can only imagine how
hostile they may be to other political parties as we go towards 12th August.
TI-Z therefore makes an urgent and earnest appeal to leaders of political parties to come down
strong on political violence and tame their cadres as we approach the campaign period. Allowing
intra and inter party political violence to take root will grossly undermine our electoral process as
it will inevitably lead to citizens staying away from the process for fear of being caught up in the
violence.
In conclusion for this week, we are committed as TI-Z to play our role in enhancing
transparency, accountability and integrity in our electoral process, and we challenge all the
stakeholders mentioned in this update to reflect on their own roles in this regard, and to take
necessary action where required in order to protect the integrity of this process. We owe it to
posterity to do our level best in this regard.
Thank you for tuning in to this update, and we look forward to you joining us again for our next
update next Tuesday.
