The Foundation for Democratic process (FODEP) has disputes claims from opposition political parties that the Electoral Commission of Zambia’s (ECZ) pilot electronic transmission of results will jeopardise elections.
Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP) president Shepard Chilombe appealed to electorates to avoid succumbing to unfounded fears from opposition political parties.
He said this in a telephone interview with ZANIS today.
Mr. Chilombe, who is currently in Vubwi revealed, that the counting of ballot papers will be manually.
He explained that the electronic counting of votes was merely a test and preparation for the use of the system in 2016 elections to speed up the transmission of results.
He expressed surprise at opposition parties rejecting the system when initially they accepted the use of the electronic transmission of results.
Mr. Chilombe wondered who could have misinformed the political parties to change at the eleventh hour.
“I have operated the system trial version which is systematic in its operation and has no room for election rigging because it does not determine results,” said Mr. Chilombe.
He has since disclosed that the Vubwi parliamentary by-elections voting, which is currently taking place, is peaceful despite low turnout.
At some point in time, we will need to get over this fear and get with the times. Technology has become so imbedded in our everyday lives that it will get to a point where everything is linked to some electronic system or other. We cannot continue to rely on counting votes manually, it is simply not efficient and prolongs the process unnecessarily. Opposition needs to reach some compormise on this with the Government. There are opportunities to test the system and work out the kinks before 2016. Let us try to do that and not just reject things outright for no convincing reason.
This is a clear violation of the Software Development life cycle, you don’t perform user acceptance or System testing when a product is already deployed or implemented. The Information Technology Unit of ECZ are not competent, they should have set up a mock election and done their testing and thereafter provided training to the stakeholders prior to that Business requirements should have been gathered from all stakeholders before developing or buying this product if it is a COTS product. ECZ is inefficient, weak and ineffective and needs a total reformation before the 2016 elections. MMD destroying the equipment is not the way to go, you can display your grievances in another way.