STOP BLAME GAME!
POLITICAL parties should have by now gone all out to sensitise and encourage their members to undertake the online voters’ re-registration exercise, which is a prelude to the physical voters’ registration.
While public sensitisation falls under the ambit of the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), it does not proscribe anyone from educating stakeholders on the imperative need to do a pre-registration.
Political parties, the media, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the Church should equally play a part in sensitising citizens on voter registration and other issues.
It is no time for any one organisation or individual to start casting negative aspersions on the national assignment, but rather time to ensure that all eligible voters go through the necessary voter registration processes.
The ECZ register needs to be updated because some people have died, others have relocated to other areas in the country while some citizens have gone to foreign jurisdictions.
Additionally, there are some youths who have now attained the age of 18 and are now eligible to vote.
The ECZ needs to capture such details through the online system.
In any case, citizens who may not manage to pre-submit their particulars on account of not having access to online system, will still have an opportunity to register physically in designated centres.
Therefore, political parties must not be naïve about a straightforward matter just to appear relevant in the eyes of their supporters and sympathisers.
In fact, genuine political parties are better placed to sensitive the people effectively because they have structures at the grassroots spread across the country.
They are at liberty to disseminate information through ward councillors, branch, constituency, district and provincial officials.
What is mind-boggling, however, is that big political parties with established structures are in fact in the fore- front speaking against updating the voters’ roll, insisting that the ECZ should use the 2016 register.
There is absolutely no need to start quarrelling over the voters’ registration now; political parties must use their grassroot structures to encourage members to start the voters’ registration process.
They must utilise the available window instead of concentrating on fault-finding.
Some opposition political parties have, in fact, been performing dismally in elections and should by now been mobilising more people to register so that they could vote for them.
Nevers Mumba’s New Hope MMD did not give any hope at all in the Lukashya constituency by-election, coming out among tail-enders – 114 votes for his candidate in a vast constituency!
The cleric-turned-politicians should have been interrogating his internal operations rather than playing a blame-game.
Similarly, UPND’s Hakainde Hichilema and his surrogates should be working on the winning formula at the same time encouraging his supporters to start the voters’ registration process instead of blindly attempting to elicit sympathy from his Facebook followers.
It appears though that some opposition political parties have realised the huge mountain ahead of them and are preparing the minds of people by alleging that there is a rigging mechanism somewhere in the country.
They must stop being cry-babies and get back to the drawing board to establish why they have been losing elections.
It will be prudent for them to adjust their campaign messages and speak the language of the people and not forcing economic parlance such as macroeconomic fundamentals on ordinary citizens.
For now, they must reactivate their “dead” grassroot structures which should immediately hit the ground running, sensitising members on their democratic rights.
The rigging messages will just work against them because they are discouraging people from voting; they must wake up.
PURSUING JUSTICE AND EQUITY WITH INTERGRITY