IEC still looking for 'stolen voters'
Lebogang Mosikare | Friday October 12, 2018 13:54
The IEC principal elections officer in Francistown, Nyanga Nyanga, revealed yesterday that they are working to find the ‘stolen voters’ so they could re-register.
On September 27, thieves broke into a dwelling house of an elections registration officer, making away with a voters’ registration book containing 18 voters’ information and another unused one containing 25 registration papers.
According to the police, the thieves also stole a contact form containing names and contacts of the 18 people who had registered at the St Faith Church polling station plus two mobile phones and P400.
The stealing of the contact form, Nyanga said, has made their job difficult as they are struggling to locate the voters who were affected so they could re-register.
However, Nyanga stated that all is not lost for the IEC since they know 17 of the people who were affected by the theft incident.
“I am expecting to meet the elections supervisor today (Friday) to further brief me about the issue,” said Nyanga who added that they are even hopeful that another voter who was affected by the incident will also come to re-register.
Nyanga said to locate the ‘stolen voters’ they called a leadership meeting on October 5 at Botsalano Kgotla consisting of Ward Development Committee (WDC), members of different political parties, aspiring councillors and other stakeholders who have an interest in the issue to try find a solution to the problem.
This week, Tatitown police stated they have not arrested anyone in connection with the matter.
The keeping of registration books in the custody of registration officers has not gone down well with some political activists.
The Umbrella for Democratic Change parliamentary candidate in Francistown East, Morgan Moseki has not ruled out taking the IEC to court over the issue because he is of the view that some registration officers and politicians may connive to register voters illegally if the registration books are kept at the homes of registration officers.
Moseki has written a complaint to the IEC, and the letter in part reads: “In the past, such instructions (from IEC secretary) included the keeping of registration books in the custody of temporary and inexperienced officers throughout the registration process which tempted some unscrupulous persons with the connivance of registration officers to register voters at night long after polling stations had closed”.