According to the Tanzania Civil Society Consortium on Election Observation, the recent changes of senior government officials within the electoral commission ahead of the polls are not a good sign, and hence, it asks the government to stop making such replacements.
In its assessment on the situation before the election, the group which made up of a number of NGOs, also directed NEC to publish voters register and polling stations 14 days before the polls.
Addressing reporters in Dar es Salaam yesterday on behalf of Tacceo chairman, advocate Imelda Urio said if the state and NEC fail to work on those issues, Tacceo and the public in general would lose trust in the outcome of the elections.
According to her, NEC is yet to be clear on how the voting exercise will be conducted, saying this has raised some misunderstandings within the public.
“NEC is not very clear on this, people are confused because they know when and where they are supposed to go and vote. We want NEC to display all the names and the voting stations to rid the public of any confusion,” she said.She added that NEC also has to do more on voter education as the report shows that most of the voters have not yet been reached.
“The Commission has got more to do on voter education as the education provided till now stands at 8.6 percent only, which is not fair to the voters,” she added.
Urio said that Tacceo has deployed 200 election observers countrywide to monitor if the public do get their rights towards the General Election and what they have observed is that there are many challenges yet to be addressed.
“We do not want what happened in 2010 whereby over 50 percent of eligible voters failed to vote due to various reasons which NEC failed to address to be repeated this year,” she said.
“In the 2010 election only 42.8 percent of the voters showed up and I am sure that if voter education was sufficiently provided then many of them would have voted,” added Urio.
The coalition also wants NEC to set up a special system which would enable students to also vote, especially those in the universities, who at the time of the election will still be on holidays.
“Everyone has the right to vote and be voted, so setting difficult conditions for voters, reflects that voters’ rights are not observed,” she said.
Tacceo is the union of 16 civil society organisations including Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC), Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP), Tanzania Media Women’s Association (Tamwa), WILAC and WILDAF.
CHANZO: THE GUARDIAN
No comments :
Post a Comment