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Zambia main opposition party demands release of voters' register

Xinhua, July 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Zambia's leading opposition political party on Thursday demanded for the release of the final voters' register ahead of next month's general elections following revelations that it contains numerous anomalies.

On Tuesday, the country's electoral body said an audit of the provisional register had established that there were numerous anomalies.

The audit, conducted by independent international auditors following concerns from stakeholders that the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), had registered foreigners as voters, established that there are 132, 837 cases on the register of people sharing national identification numbers while 2,555 case shared names and dates of birth.

The audit further established that 142,383 people were found to be ineligible to vote and will have to be removed from the register.

The audit however established that there were no foreigners on the register.

The United Party for National Development (UPND) said the final register should be released so that the anomalies are corrected before the August 11 polls.

"Following the voter verification exercise we continue to request the early release of the register after a number of our supporters reported that they found they were registered to different polling stations than they had been previously. This has understandably raised concerns that many who did not verify may now find themselves unable to vote on August 11th. We are yet to receive a satisfactory answer on this front," Stephen Katuka, the party's secretary-general said in a statement.

The party said it was raising the concerns so that they could be addressed in time in order to guarantee the credibility of the elections.

The party further said it was not satisfied with the explanation by the auditors that they were no foreigners on the register, saying it was evident that the audit failed to address the matter of foreigners on the register.

"The auditors are not able to determine the existence of these foreign voters on the roll from their desks in Lusaka, looking solely at national identification and voters' card numbers. The evidence is not in Lusaka," the party said.

Investigations carried by the country's main independent newspaper, the Post, had showed that thousands of Malawians and Mozambicans were registered along the eastern border of Zambia. Endit