THE Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) says it has registered over seven million eligible voters for the 2021 general elections.
The Commission also said it had managed to register 93 per cent of eligible prisoners as voters to take part in the election.
Addressing the press yesterday, ECZ Chief Electoral Officer Patrick Nshindano announced that new statistics showed that less than nine million Zambians were currently eligible to vote.
“The Commission had captured a total of 6,407,752 registered voters during phases one, two, three and four of the exercise. The extended four days gave us a figure of 612,997 registered voters, bringing the total number of registered voters for the entire period of the voter registration exercise to a provisional total of 7,020,749,” Nshindano said. “Kindly take note that the figure is provisional as the data collected will be subjected to de-duplication and clean-up process.”
He added that the response from prisoners was overwhelming.
“Out of a targeted number of 16,000 eligible persons in lawful custody, the Commission registered a total number of 14,963, representing 93.52 per cent. The Commission is pleased with the response from persons in lawful custody to exercise their right to register as voters,” said Nshindano. “By the way, there is no country in the world where they have managed to capture all the eligible voters…We indeed registered over 83 per cent of the eligible voters above the global average in such a short period of time.”
He said the Commission would commence the process of consolidating data collected from all registration kits used during the registration process.
Meanwhile, ECZ Secretary and Legal Counsel, Bob Musenga has dispelled assertions that there is no legal instrument to actualise the participation of inmates as voters.
Mr Musenga has explained that the Constitutional Court, in the Godfrey Malembeka versus The Attorney General Case, expunged Section 9 of the Electoral Process Act, to pave way for inmates to participate in elections.
Seven million to decide the fate of how many zambians? Not even the Zambia Statistical Agency knows because they did not conduct their mandated census of population and statistics that they do every decade.
Thanks ECZ, the worry though is the extra judicial killings happening in Zambia. Remember yesterdays was not the first. Up to now the ones who killed Graziar Mapatizya, Mapenzi Chibulo, Vespers Shimuzhila, Lawrence Banda and now Joe Kaunda have net been brought to book. Lets please live in harmony and peace, we are one people.
We hope elections will be peaceful. Government induced tension is very worrying, surely going to give solidarity to your leader must warrant into a punishment of death, and that punishment not pronounced by the courts but by the police
What about money for the staff who worked
Mushindano mushindayobe
Can ECZ give us the breakdown of registered voters by province after the 4 days extended registration period? ECZ should also explain why there were more registered voters in Eastern, Northern, Luapula and Muchinga provinces while other provinces experienced a decrease or minor increase of registered voters between the 2016 and the so called new 2020 register?
The figure that ECZ has captured so far in the registration exercise of voters which is less than the targeted figure is 9 million. This failure has come up because of ECZ(PF) arrogance and intolerance to contributions from members of the public. ECZ! There is no need of self praise here. You have failed the test. The public told you 30 days was not enough.
Mwabombeni. The upnd were crying for extensions to capture more voters. This has been done and yet they continue to cry. I told them they whether we extend for 3 days or until the election day itself, the results won’t change. Pf is winning and that is it. Now the tribal boys in upnd will start crying over other things.
where did ecz get the initial projected 9 million, when we had no census since 2010? who gave them the 9 million target?
So, the 2 million Zambians ECZ has failed to capture will be disenfranchised – planning done by cadres
In the 2010 Census report 49.3 percent of the 14,302,975 population count was aged 18+.
With the current estimated population of 18,383,955 people at mid year according to UN data, at least 9 million are eligible to vote.
So 2 million people or 22% will be disenfranchised as a result of a scheme by the ECZ and PF.
With just cleaning up the old register of 6 million voters and adding new voters, Zambia would have achieved over 95% voter registration.
Still short of the projected 9 million. The voter registration should be a continuous exercise just like it used to be in the past just like getting an nrc is a continuous exercise.
These are all lies and cooked figures. Who can believe Shindano and his PF tandem of evil skimmers. Their evil schemes are bound to fail they bill 10 fell. They will have themselves to blame for all the misery they are inflicting on the country.
Stop parting yourselves on the backs over failures to plan and execute. You are concentrating on prisoners who so far made little effort to participate in elections. The other thing is prisoners are no freedom and are either commanded or instructed on what to do. So what is so important about people who follow directives to do things to vote. Obviously someone is going to direct them to cast their votes one way or the other while living out people who have been sacrificing the time to go register as voters sometimes for more than 3 days on the ques only for them to be told we have run out of materials or we don’t this or we have lost access to register you. Is this something to be proud of? You should be talking of resigning instead of be proud. Shame upon you.
Editor, where is my post? You know censorship leads to fake News. Ask Lungu, he shut down the in order to censor the news? Ask him, is he better off now than when the post was in circulation? I don’t think so, because anyone can jump online and post stuff.