ZAMBIA: Churches Successfully carried out Election Monitoring

His Excellency Edgar Sworn in as President of Zambia

The Catholic Church in Zambia in
partnership with other faith based organizations, which include the Council of
Churches in Zambia, which incorporates the Anglicans, the United Church, the
Presbyterian Churches and others; the Evangelical Fellowships in Zambia has
successfully participated in the monitoring process of the just ended by-elections
that declared His Excellency Edgar Lungu, a new President of Zambia.

 

According to Eugene Kabilika Head
of Programs at Caritas Zambia, an arm of Zambia Episcopal Conference ZEC, the
monitoring team managed to put together a document for monitoring the elections
where the main focus was the result management which they  called Parallel Votes Tabulation (PVT) while
on the other focus they were to monitor incidences that were happening as well
as the manner in which people voted.  

 

He said that ZEC also
incorporated the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in the process. “All
these faith based organizations formed Christian Churches Monitoring Group (CCMG),”
he said adding that “Caritas Zambia under the governance and democracy program hosted
and played the secretarial role of the CCMG whereby technical issues that
needed to be handled were effectively taken care of.”

 

“The training of monitors in
charge of Parallel Voter Tabulation was conducted before and that CCMG managed
to place 703 monitors across the 150 constituencies. They were trained on how
to manage the data which was technical and was electronically done meaning no much
paper work involved,” Kabilika explained adding that “The data received from
the polling stations were sent directly to the CCMG Data Center, which had over
twenty data clerks.” 

 

He said, “our justice and peace
coordinators in the eleven Catholic Dioceses in Zambia were doing what is
called long term monitoring starting from the time when the presidential candidates
launched their nominations campaigns up to the material day of the
by-election.” 

 

He said that the diocesan justice
and peace coordinators collected data on issues related with media during the
campaigns period, record issues of violence that were happening, problems the political
parties were facing in their campaigns and any other issues that were arising
in relation to the by-election. “On the Election Day the only activity involved
was moving from one station to the other seeing what was happening at the
polling stations,” he said.

 

According to Kabilika, all the
information gathered were sent to CCMG in order to prepare a comprehensive
report which will be released later.