"Cause for concern" as final votes are counted

There were enough irregularities in Zambia's general elections last week for there to be "cause for concern", a leading member of the Carter Centre's election observer team told IRIN on Monday. "We have seen a number of things of concern to us regarding the transparency of the tabulation of the votes" - both at the constituency level and in Lusaka, David Carroll, associate director of the centre's democracy programme said. Speaking by cellphone at Lusaka airport before returning to the United States, Carroll told IRIN there were "incidents of discrepancies scattered around the country", but it was too early to make a definitive statement on the fairness of the election. However, "we have seen enough reports of irregularities for there to be cause for concern", he said. Opposition parties have accused the authorities of vote-rigging, amid protest over the slow vote count after presidential, parliamentary and local elections on Thursday. Candidates from six opposition parties met Chief Justice Matthew Ngulube on Sunday to ask him to investigate "anomalies and flaws" in the polls. Their supporters outside the Supreme Court noisily denounced the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), news reports said. In a joint letter the candidates alleged that ballot boxes had been stuffed, and that new ballots had arrived after counting had been completed in a bid by the MMD to retain power. Anderson Mazoka, the opposition United Party for National Development's presidential candidate, declared himself president over the weekend. With the results of 93 of the 150 constituencies announced, Mazoka on Sunday led by 9,000 votes, but a million ballots were still uncounted, the regional feature service SARDC reported. In a preliminary statement on the election, the Carter Centre criticised the country's electoral commission for its lack of preparation. It also noted the confusion over the delayed opening of some polling stations, while voting was extended past the official deadline in others. "The Carter Centre has more serious concerns about the tabulation of results at constituency centres, and the relaying of these results to ECZ [Electoral Commission of Zambia] in Lusaka," the report released on Sunday said. "There was widespread fatigue on the part of all stakeholders, as well as inadequate control over who entered the tabulation centres and insufficient transparency." "In general, the tabulation process was chaotic, often occurring in inadequate and insecure premises. In one instance, independent observers discovered ballot boxes had been diverted to a private office inside a counting centre (Munali) without the presence of party agents and observers. Although this incident was addressed, we heard several reports of similar occurrences. While these may have been a careless error, they raise legitimate suspicions among the electorate." The Centre added: "We have received complaints from all of the major opposition political parties about the coverage of the elections in the public media. Results were delayed, or released sporadically, and there was an apparent bias in terms of which results were announced and how they are conveyed to the public. In the first 24 hours following the close of the polls, the ECZ and state-owned TV announced mainly the results of constituencies won by MMD despite the fact that results from non-MMD constituencies were also available." The report stressed that the "slow pace of ECZ reporting of preliminary election results raises serious questions, especially given the closeness of the presidential race". The Centre concluded: "Given concerns about transparency in the tabulation process, we believe all sides should strive to provide for maximum transparency in the post-election period; particularly in the time remaining before the declaration of the final presidential results by the Chief Justice. Every opportunity should be pursued to check vote tabulations from alternate sources. To this end, the ECZ needs to ensure timely access to official results at all levels so these can be cross-checked against the poll results and tabulation results collected by party agents and observers."