The COMESA Election Observer Mission to the recently held 12 August 2021 Zambia General Elections noted several good practices that were implemented during the electoral process. Among them, the establishment of conflict management infrastructure to deal with election related conflict.
The establishment of the Election Support Centres at both national and provincial levels to coordinate logistical, administrative aspects and to monitor potential electoral risks or challenges was considered a best practice for providing local solutions to local problems across the regions.
In a Preliminary Statement issued by the Head of the Observer Mission Amb. Ashraf Rashed two days after the polling, COMESA Observers identified the use of duplicate registers by political party agents as an important initiative in ensuring enhanced transparency. They also cited the self-funding of election activities and electoral processes.
The mission also acknowledged the large participation of women and youth in the electoral process with many serving as electoral staff and candidates.
“One out of the sixteen presidential candidates was a woman while four of the candidates had a female running mate. In addition, 21% of the candidates contested for national assembly positions whilst 12.8% of the council chairperson/mayor contestants were women,” the observers stated.
The use of technology including the biometric voter registration and biometric voter identification was among those listed as best practices.
The observer mission also made a number of recommendations to help improve future elections in the country. These included the need to cap the number of voters per polling station to avoid overcrowding and delays, the need to ensure that necessary and adequate materials are provided to all polling stations, including inks, lighting, markers and envelopes. These arose from the observers’ experiences at the polling stations.
They underscored the need for the Electoral Commission of Zambia to provide more space for polling stations in highly populated areas to avoid overcrowding and to hasten the election process. The mission also called for equal opportunity in public media for all candidates and political parties to engage with the public.
The COMESA Mission comprised forty-two observers drawn from ten Member States namely Burundi, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe as well as staff from COMESA Secretariat. Prior to their deployment, COMESA observers received training on 7- 8 August 2021.