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COMMENTARY
Electoral fraud in many of the African democracies occurs through a number of strategies, such as ballot filling, electoral bribery, violence against political opponents, and the emasculation of independent media that often serve as the primary means. communication for opposition parties that are denied coverage in the state. run posts. Other tactics involve putting dead voters on the electoral register, creating irregularities to obstruct voters and, more recently, using fake news to influence the election result.
These strategies have been used with varying success, but are not as common as before. Their susceptibility to failure and the contagious will of the judiciary to overturn fraudulently won elections, as recently happened in Kenya and Malawi, has led incumbent presidents elsewhere to devise more sophisticated and subtle ways to ensure their stay in power. A clear example is the president of Zambia, Edgar Lungu. Before the general elections in August 2021, he devised a double strategy that would eliminate the possibility of removing him from power through the ballot box.
Step 1: Amend the Constitution
The first mechanism that Lungu created to shape the outcome of the 2021 presidential elections is an amendment to the Constitution that allows the formation of a coalition government if neither candidate gets more than 50% of the total valid votes cast. Currently, the Constitution allows a second vote between the two main candidates.
Lungu barely managed a victory in the last general election of 2016, winning by 50.3%. This time, he takes no chances. His ruling Patriotic Front (PF) party has brought to Parliament Bill 10 of the Zambian Constitution (Amendment) of 2019, proposing another stage in Zambia’s election between the first vote and a possible second round.
At this intermediate stage, if no presidential candidate has won more than 50% in the first round, then the main candidate, but no other candidate, could propose a coalition with a losing candidate of their choice, with the only requirement that “the The combined votes of that presidential candidate and the preferred presidential candidate that forms the coalition government reach the threshold of 50% of the valid votes cast. It maintains the existing constitutional provision in the second round, but only if the presidential candidate with the highest number of votes fails to form a coalition government within the specified time period.
This suggests that Lungu is anticipating another close election in which it may emerge with more votes than its rivals but fall short of the required threshold of 50% + 1 vote. In this case, only an additional 2% or 3% may be needed to form a winning majority. This will likely come from smaller parties, friends of Lungu, who are in opposition in name only. Their vote total may be small, but this amendment could make them kings. The much-criticized bill requires the support of two-thirds of the deputies to pass. If all the deputies of the main opposition party, the United Party for National Development (UPND) manage to remain resistant to bribery, the bill will not pass.
Step 2: suppress the voter roll
The second way Lungu is manipulating the elections is by abolishing the current voter registry, which numbers six million voters, and creating a new one favorable to his prospects. High-level figures in the PF said Lungu fears losing the 2021 election if the voter list used in the last general election is not discarded. Your fears are not unfounded. He was first elected in the 2015 by-election presidential election that followed the untimely death of Michael Sata from office. He was reelected in the disputed 2016 elections, narrowly defeating Hakainde Hichilema, leader of the UPND.
In both elections, Lungu finished first in the same six of the 10 Zambia provinces and Hichilema finished first in four provinces. Lungu knows he’s in trouble because data from the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) shows that voter turnout was, on average, higher in regions won by his rival compared to those that voted for him. In both 2015 and 2016, he won his heart with comparatively smaller margins than his closest rival won his strengths. In the 2016 elections, for example, Lungu received 42,902 and 46,255 votes in the Southern and Western provinces, and Hichilema obtained 527,893 and 226,722 votes, respectively. In the Copperbelt and Lusaka provinces, Lungu received 345,275 and 375,760 votes, and Hichilema 189,562 and 242,172 votes, respectively.
If this pattern continues, one thing is clear: Lungu, whose support in urban areas is likely to wane due to Zambia’s faltering economy, will not win the next general election.
Commission sources said Lungu exerted significant pressure on the electoral body to abolish the permanent register rather than update it, as required by law, and as has been done in every election since 2005 when it was first created. The electoral commission announced in June that it would discard the registration. On September 21, days after using the same registry to hold a series of parliamentary and local government elections, the commission told citizens that their registries would no longer be valid: “If you don’t register, you won’t vote in the 2021 election. general. The current voter card will not be used in the 2021 general election. ”
Recognizing the limited time remaining before the 2021 elections, less than 10 months, the commission pledged to allocate no more than 30 days to the voter registration exercise, starting October 28. By using the commission in this way, Lungu hopes to disenfranchise as many opposition supporters as possible. Three of the four provinces where Hichilema maintains strong support, for example, are in rural areas. Limited publicity about the commission’s plans to abolish the existing registry, long distances to the nearest administrative centers, the start of the rainy season (which begins in late October), and the limited time available to complete the exercise will undermine the capacity of voters. in these areas to participate in voter registration. Furthermore, the commission has admitted that the government has not provided it with sufficient funds for the exercise.
The current registry was created over a period of 11 years. The commission now says it is trying to capture nine million voters in 30 days, something almost impossible. She promised to supplement mobile voter registration with online registration, which she launched with 16,000 entries on September 21. In addition to the lack of legislation providing for online voter registration, there is also no experience of doing so in Zambia, a country with very limited internet penetration, especially in rural districts.
Furthermore, in the absence of a clear regulatory framework to manage the exercise, the online registration system is open to misuse and fraud. It is not impossible to create a largely false electorate that will vote primarily for the incumbent. A legal challenge filed by citizens seeking to stop the commission’s decision to discard a valid and legally established voter registration was postponed after the judge in charge of the superior court, who had previously assigned the case to herself, stayed it was the day it was due to hearing it, using the excuse that it had been exposed to Covid-19.
Taken together, these facts suggest that Lungu is, in effect, establishing the administrative, legal, and constitutional mechanism to perpetuate his tenure in office. If his two main strategies fail, he is said to have another card up his sleeve: dealing a major blow to the opposition using electoral exclusion. The last few weeks have seen intense speculation in the local media that Lungu has plans to arrest Hichilema on a fabricated charge. If there is merit in this accusation, presumably the goal would be to secure a dubious conviction that would disqualify his main rival from the 2021 race.
The limited space for civil society to mobilize against its illegitimate actions, the weaknesses of the political opposition and the willingness of the judiciary to submit to presidential power mean that it is likely to be successful in its attempt to fix the outcome of the elections of the next year.
By undermining the elections, the Constitution and the judiciary, Lungu is weakening the very institutions that offer long-term hope for democratic consolidation. And by making it nearly impossible to democratically oppose him, the president is effectively eliminating legal means of political competition for government occupation and increasing the risk of large-scale civil unrest and violence. Zambia was once highly regarded as a model of democracy in Africa. Now it is mired in a deep slip, not so much in dictatorship as in chaos.
Many people inside and outside it have yet to come to terms with the changing political character of the country. By the time they do, it may be too late.
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