Zambia opposition charges election fraud
August 12, 2016, 10:24 pm

Initial reports that there was a large turnout when polls opened on Thursday. Nearly 6.7 million Zambians are registered to vote [Xinhua]

The commission said in a statement late Friday that verification of the results were taking longer than they had anticipated and that the commission was working as fast as it possibly could.

Zambia’s bitterly contested vote comes amid and an economic crisis that has been perpetuated by the commodities slowdown around the world, and – in particular – China, where its appeal for imported wares from the African market has dropped significantly in the past two years.

At press time, the commission announced results in only three of 156 constituencies. At least 6.7 million people are registered to vote and preliminary data indicates that there was a large turnout at the polls on Thursday. However, no exact figures have yet been released.

Initial results appeared to show that the incumbent president Edgar Lungu had a very slim lead against his closest rival Hakainde Hichilema.

Hichilema’s opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) has accused the electoral commission of delay tactics and allowing someone to tamper with the ballots in favour of Lungu. It alleges that a man with access to the commission’s computers was arrested late Friday, Reuters reported.

There has been no independent verification of the incident, however.

Mismanagement charges

Lungu himself was only elected to the top office two years ago when President Michael Sata suddenly died. Hichilema has run in five previous presidential elections.

He has directed severe criticism at the incumbent for mismanaging the economy.

The opposition charges that the ruling Patriotic Front party squandered a stable economy that was built on the export of copper and other rich minerals to the outside world.

China, which was one of Zambia’s greatest markets for copper, was forced to scale back significantly its import of such commodities which has in turn adversely affected the global price of the metal.

Government statistics show that copper makes up at least 70 per cent of Zambia’s expert income.

As the economy began to shrink, the government was forced to shut down many mines and fire tens of thousands of workers.

It is currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund for a loan.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies