IEC vs Opposition 'ballot box escort' judgment today

The two opposition parties have individually taken the IEC to court on an urgent application seeking an order for the latter to allow the individual political parties to escort the vehicles carrying ballot boxes from polling stations to counting centres to prevent the possibility of fraud. Their other concern is that there are names of voters from various constituencies which appear more than twice on the voter's rolls bearing the same physical addresses and other particulars, which they feel the IEC might have deliberately overlooked. Further, they also called for the electronic roll to be availed.

BCP lawyer Dutch Leburu requested that in the ruling, the court should consider the fact that his clients' concerns are the transparency process that the IEC seems unwilling to follow. He advised that the order to escort should therefore be granted, if at all, there is nothing to hide. By so doing, he said the court would have protected the integrity of the electoral process as well as Botswana's democracy.