Welcome to the new President

The waiting was tense, then finally in the early hours of Friday morning the Presidential election results were announced and the Republic of Zambia had a new President, HE Mr Michael Chilufya Sata; the fifth president since independence. Mazabuka being a stronghold for one of the other opposition parties saw little of the joyous celebrations that took place elsewhere in the country, though there will still plenty of car horns being honked and generally people wearing smiles on their faces once they had learnt of the result; most people here seemed happy with the outcome.

The handover of power was surprisingly quick and efficient. The former President, Rupiah Banda, had delivered his farewell speech by Friday lunchtime and by the afternoon Michael Sata was taking the oath of office in front of thousands of his jubilant supporters in Lusaka. Marco and I watched the inauguration on Zamia’s national broadcaster ZNBC who sadly never quite got the pictures, nor the sound quality, right for the new President’s first speech. The wonky camera work was amusing. Despite this the pictures of the crowd still conveyed the sense that this was the result that the people wanted. There seems to be a sense of relief that the elections are over and that overall they were peaceful. People also feel that the change in Government can lead to real change and benefit everyone and not just the fortunate few. Both the speeches made by the former and the new Presidents were positive and conciliatory; let’s hope this good start continues.

Inside a polling station

Aside from being interested in the election results my main curiosity was in how a polling station is supposed to function – who does what in terms of the vote, election officials and election observers. So I spent a few hours of election day just watching what was going on, mainly from our office at the Boma which had been converted into a rather cramped (and hot) polling station for the day.

The essentials for a voter are that he/she must be 18 or over, had previously registered to vote and turns up to vote sometime between 0600 – 1800 hrs. An individual can only vote at the centre that he/she had originally registered to vote. They also have to bring along with them their National Registration Card (NRC) and Voter’s card to the relevant polling station. If they turned up with only one of these documents then they were not permitted to vote. Within each polling station there were seated a mixture of Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) officials (normally 5) wearing bright orange vests and election observers from the political parties and civil society organisations.

The voting process then went something like this:

1. A voter presents his/her NRC and Voter’s card to the first ECZ official who searches through a booklet to check that the voter is eligible to vote at this particular polling station. The booklet includes a mini copy of each Voter’s card registered to that polling station. The details on a Voter’s card include a photo, voter number, NRC number, date of birth and gender
2. The voter and NRC numbers are read out by the first ECZ official who ticks off the voter in his/her booklet. The election observers from the political parties and civil society organisations have copies of the same booklet and also check off each voter
3. As Zambians are voting for representatives in Presidential, Parliamentary and Council elections a voter next collects three forms for the candidates under each of these areas. There are 10 presidential candidates for a voter to choose from; only one candidate is female
4. Each polling station should have 3 cardboard cut out polling booths so a voter will proceed to one of these booths with their 3 pieces of paper to then cast their votes
5. The final stage is for a voter to neatly fold each piece of paper (ideally) and insert them into the appropriate sealed ballot boxes. The boxes are colour coded: orange for the Presidential boxes, red for MPs and black for Councillors. There is an ECZ official on hand with a ruler to ensure each paper is pushed deep inside the ballot boxes.

Polling Day

The waiting is over and at last Zambians can cast their vote in the Presidential, Parliamentary and Council elections. With the noise from the political parties on pause for the time being the queues of people in the centre of Mazabuka town started forming very early, some from around 4am, even before the election officials had arrived at their polling stations, and definitely before lazy me got up given that election day had been declared a bank holiday. I think part of this was simply the eagerness of people wanting to be one of first to cast their vote (and to pass this fact onto their neighbours) and then to be to relax for the rest of the day, especially as the temperature has been getting hotter and stickier far too early in the season. In Mazabuka voting has been quiet and orderly with people proud to vote and to show off the black mark on their thumb that proves they have done so. Now the waiting starts all over again for the results, maybe Wednesday, probably Thursday.

Let's make some noise

It did not take long for the noise to start. Mazabuka, probably like every other town across Zambia, now has campaign vehicles being driven around daily blaring out loud music and party messages with supporters singing, dancing and chanting their own particular slogans. The parties compete with each other to see who can make the most noise, get out the largest number of supporters and also cause the most amount of disruption on the roads by slowing down or often stopping traffic. The two banners in the picture have been part of a game of cat and mouse pitched on the roundabout. At one point the red banner (one of the opposition parties) was positioned above the blue banner (depicting the President and the party in government). This was deemed to be offensive and undermining to the President so the blue one had to move – side by side being the diplomatic alternative. Otherwise Mazabuka has been fairly quiet so far and has not experienced any of small scale fighting and bickering that has occurred in some other towns. The weather is hotting up and so too are the politicians and their parties.

Elections

Finally! At last! The date of the Zambian National Elections has now been announced and they will take place on Tuesday 20th September 2011. I am quite excited and interested too. Given the amount of campaigning that has been going on for months and months (actually probably even before I arrived early last year) it will be interesting to see what will change or be different. Zambian friends assure me that I have seen and heard nothing yet, and all the politicians and their supporters will start making even more 'noise' very soon. So I doubt that this will be the last time that I write about the elections.