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Operational Young Vote (OYV) has called for refining of the country’s electoral laws to avoid future elections conflicts and entrench democratic tenets.
The civil society organization also said it was engaging the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) to ensure continuous voter registration aimed at capturing new voters.
OYV Copperbelt coordinator Rodgers Nyirongo said the organization has noted a lot of improvements in the electoral system since the 2011 general election but that more needed to be done to be in tune with
current trends.
“We have noted a lot of improvements in Zambia’s electoral laws since 2021 ,but we need to do more especially that the latest ECZ ‘s 2021 General Election postmortem reports have shown some electoral law breaches which calls for more refining ,” Nyorongo said.
He said in an interview on Tuesday that the ECZ had recorded a lot of milestones in the last decade in terms of handling elections, hence the need for continuous electoral law refinement to meet stakeholders’ expectations.
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Nyirongo stated stakeholders have higher expectations from the United Party for National Development (UPND) in terms of ‘perfecting’ the governance system having gone through a lot during their ‘days’ in opposition.
He said having experienced bad governance while in opposition; the party in power should push for more electoral reforms using their past experiences.
Nyirongo was also upbeat that the co-opting of seasoned governance experts like MacDonald Chipenzi in the ECZ structure whose voice was very ‘loud’ in pushing for good governance practices and electoral reforms would help in ECZ reforms.
“Appointing people like Mr Chipenzi who has been on the forefront in agitating for electoral reforms will help ECZ push for electoral reforms that minimizes electoral disputes,” he said.
Nyirongo added that the ECZ should continue doing continuous voter registration in the coming year so as to capture more youths.
“We will continue pushing for continuous voter registration in 2023 as the country prepares for the 2026 general elections because elections are a process ,we want to ensure that more youths participate in the elections ,” he said.
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