IEC points out Zim benchmarking positives

Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Monday February 19, 2024 06:00

With the opposition breathing on the commission’s neck and allegations of ‘learning how to rig’ fueling backlash, the IEC has justified the trip indicating that visited to specifically look at the accreditation machine for observers.

In a press statement, the IEC principal public relations officer, Phatodi Nacane said as a member of the electoral commission Forum of Southern African Countries (ECF- SADC), the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is part of the network where commissions meet to exchange ideas and share experiences.

“This is a network of all Election Management Bodies (EMBs) in Southern Africa, where member commissions meet to have an interchange of technical support and share experiences on best practices,” Nacane said on Wednesday.

Furthermore, the IEC explained that in February 2023 they undertook similar missions to Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa and India to engage on electronic voter registration in preparation for transition from manual to electronic registration.

Nacane said the commission dispatched its manager responsible for voter education and the chief public relations officer went to Zimbabwe to specifically look at the accreditation machine for observers. In addition, Nacane pointed out that this machine is used to chum out accreditation cards for persons who observe elections in the country.

He continued; “currently the IEC accredits both local and international election observers manually and this is not efficient. The ZEC accreditation machine has been hailed as the best in various reports, in terms of expeditious issuance of the accreditation cards.”

He said the idea is to see what the ZEC has and compare it with what other countries in the region have, with a view to see what can work for Botswana as the commission prepares for the 2024 general elections. This was supported by political analyst Leonard Sesa who said some people are not fair to ZEC as it has some of the good things that Botswana could learn from.

“Even if we challenge the credibility of ZEC, we should accept that not everything for them is as bad as being perceived. It has good structures in place that our IEC could learn from it. I was part of SADC observers last year and we made recommendations on the Zimbabwe election report where they are doing well compared to other countries and where they are failing. Therefore, let's accept that there are good things that IEC could learn,” he said.

He further pointed out that Zimbabwe has a good accreditation system as compared to Botswana and other countries. Sesa said Botswana uses a manual system while Zimbabwe is doing things online. The political analyst said the online system helps to do things more quickly than people having to queue for accreditations, and that would be a good move by the country.

Unlike what some opposition parties are saying, IEC Botswana did not visit to learn some of the electoral processes but for accreditation. He said the country so keep on learning from other SADC countries when they have good structures in place. He also pointed out that some countries are far ahead of Botswana even on other policies, and that Botswana also has good policies and structures that other countries do benchmark on.