What A Mess

Monitor Editor | Monday October 20, 2014 16:41

This time around however, public servant voting has caused a lot of stir. There were instances where names of opposition candidates were missing, voters were turned away because their names and identitification numbers did not correlate; while some were told to vote at a polling station they hadn’t registered to vote at. Shortage of ballot papers at polling stations across the country on Saturday was the order of the day.

This mess, it appears, was not only experienced by the civil servants. Some Batswana voting outside the country used social networks to vent their frustrations as some reported that they could not vote because the system simply rejected them.

This is worrying indeed. While the IEC have their own excuses as to why the voting got off to a bad start, we have our reservations.

According to the IEC, the problem of bal- lot paper shortage was compounded by many civil servants who this time chose not to reveal where they were going to vote or when they were going to vote. According to the IEC, the civil servants chose to play their cards close to their chests and perceived the IEC to be in collusion with security agents who could sabotage the civil servants’ at- tempts to vote.

This is a cause for concern indeed if at all this fear as portrayed by the IEC is real. While the IEC wants to assure Batswana that they can be trusted with information, the IEC should have long worked on their image as an organisation that can be trusted; for this lack of trust, if indeed it is true, is an indication that Batswana believe the IEC is not trustworthy.

But the problems are much bigger and wider than just the civil servants refusing with information. How else does the IEC explain the missing candidates’ names on the ballot papers, or voters being turned away because their names do not match the one on their Omang; or voters being told that they were registred to vote at a polling station they do not even know.

It raises alarms and makes one wonder whether the IEC computer network has been infiltrated and data tempered with. The IEC can you once again assure the nation that everything is right before the Friday polls?