Dear Editor,
I write to appeal to Electoral Commission of Zambia to put its foot down and be heard on the political front as things seem to have gone weird now.
ECZ should raise its voice and be heard when people are complaining about one situation and another to give confidence to all stakeholders as we head towards the general elections in 2021.
For instance, how does ECZ qualify vote buying in their electoral code of conduct? And when is the vote buying seen to be an electoral crime and what are the punitive measures it has put in place to curtail such?
As a country we are witnessing a lot of huge financial and material donations to mainly churches, chiefs and political gatherings currently while most Zambians are grappling with high cost of commodities, hunger, debts, etc.
Unfortunately, these donations are coming from our leaders, not just ordinary members, meaning, these are not just donations as may be argued by some.
While all this is happening before the campaign window period, ECZ is silent over it while other political players are actually accusing ECZ to be playing along or double standards.
It is for this reason that I appeal to ECZ to sound its siren and spell out what voter buying is before it gets worse and out of hand.
We hear that some voters are even being instructed on which polling station to vote from, which is unacceptable.
Everyone knowns that ECZ is autonomous but the question is, has the commission behaved as such in the view of not all stakeholders but at least the majority of the stakeholders?
Wisdom Muyunda
Chingola
