IEC yet to register nine Marobela voters
Pini Bothoko | Monday April 22, 2024 06:00
Reached for a follow up on the matter, IEC spokesperson Osupile Maroba said out of the 48 affected voters, 39 have been assisted and managed to register.
“Through the efforts of the Commission and stakeholders, significant progress on reaching out to all of the 48 affected voters was made. “Only nine voters are remaining and they still have the opportunity to be attended to during inspection of the general roll which will commence soon,” he said.
Maroba stated that the Commission continues to spread the message to encourage those who have not shown up to do so during the 42 days of the inspection of the general roll.
Asked what measures the IEC has put in place to ensure that incidents such as that don’t happen again as the country is about to go into another supplementary registration exercise, Maroba revealed that intensive training of supervisors and registration clerks will be conducted to ensure consistent vigilance during the exercise.
Back in January 19, 2024, a registration clerk engaged at Marobela main kgotla polling station in the Marobela-Mafhungo/Hubona polling station (council ward) in Nkange Constituency's vehicle was broken into and six voters’ registration books were stolen. Then, the alleged thieves made away with some belongings including a bag containing voters’ registration books. She had six registration books of which two were fully used and voters issued with voters’ registration cards. The third book had only registered two people whilst the rest of the books were not used at all.
This incident left residents reeling in shock with mixed feelings as they questioned if it was a real case of theft or it was staged while demanding answers especially that there has been a contentious issue about the fairness of the conduct of processes of elections. Furthermore, the theft incident raised fears of the IEC’s bad faith in conducting the registration process as they suspected it might have been the work of some people sponsored by some saboteurs of democracy.
Then, residents and opposition parties slammed the government to have employed security companies to guard tents, chairs, tables but lost focus on the important registration books challenging IEC to identify safe places to store voters’ registration books after hours.
Opposition parties argued that the incident dented the security and credibility of the electoral processes, a clear indication that the IEC is failing in its mandate to protect and run credible elections hence fear that the country might have elections that are not free and fair. There is belief that if there is one thing that can cause chaos and instability in a country was the mishandling of elections something that has happened in other countries. Some opposition parties challenged IEC to prioritise the implementation of secure and technologically- driven voter registration processes to prevent future incidents of theft something that will also help in ensuring the safety and accuracy of voters’ records.