PF Chair Admits New Voter Roll Provides Advantage For Government

The Patriotic Front’s (PF) Southern Province Chair, Lawrence Evans, has admitted that the new voter roll will provide an advantage for the current government at the general election in August. 

Speaking in an interview with the Mast newspaper, Mr Evans said that the opposition United Party for National Development had “high false hopes” for August and that “President Edgar Lungu shall win the elections”.

“What comforts [me] more is the fact that we have a new Voters’ Register with a lot of first time voters. This voters’ roll will provide a conducive playing field for the PF and President Edgar Lungu to win the elections”.

Mr Evans’ comments confirm what many opposition figures and civil society activists had long suspected: that scrapping the 2016 voter roll in favour of a totally new register would unfairly advantage the Patriotic Front.

The PF chair went on to criticise UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema, saying that opposition supporters had been “led into a ditch by their leader”. He called on the UPND leadership to make way for ‘new blood’.

Claims that the PF government has been attempting to skew the voter roll have circulated since early 2020, when it was reported that National Registration Cards were being unfairly distributed to favour PF strongholds.

The decision to overhaul the electoral register in November 2020 prompted further outrage, with the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) accused of disenfranchising millions of citizens by attempting to register 9 million voters in the space of just over a month.

On December 15 2020, the ECZ was forced to further extend the voter registration period by four days after it only managed to register 6.4 million voters - roughly a third less than what it had promised. 

In the end the ECZ only registered some 6.69 million voters, disenfranchising over two million eligible Zambians. 

PF Southern Province Chair Lawrence Evans