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According to Eugene Kabilika Head of Programs at Caritas Zambia, an arm of Zambia Episcopal Conference ZEC, the monitoring team managed to put together a document for monitoring the elections where the main focus was the result management which they called Parallel Votes Tabulation (PVT) while on the other focus they were to monitor incidences that were happening as well as the manner in which people voted.
He said that ZEC also incorporated the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in the process. “All these faith based organizations formed Christian Churches Monitoring Group (CCMG),” he said adding that “Caritas Zambia under the governance and democracy program hosted and played the secretarial role of the CCMG whereby technical issues that needed to be handled were effectively taken care of.”
“The training of monitors in charge of Parallel Voter Tabulation was conducted before and that CCMG managed to place 703 monitors across the 150 constituencies. They were trained on how to manage the data which was technical and was electronically done meaning no much paper work involved,” Kabilika explained adding that “The data received from the polling stations were sent directly to the CCMG Data Center, which had over twenty data clerks.”
He said, “our justice and peace coordinators in the eleven Catholic Dioceses in Zambia were doing what is called long term monitoring starting from the time when the presidential candidates launched their nominations campaigns up to the material day of the by-election.”
He said that the diocesan justice and peace coordinators collected data on issues related with media during the campaigns period, record issues of violence that were happening, problems the political parties were facing in their campaigns and any other issues that were arising in relation to the by-election. “On the Election Day the only activity involved was moving from one station to the other seeing what was happening at the polling stations,” he said.
According to Kabilika, all the information gathered were sent to CCMG in order to prepare a comprehensive report which will be released later.
By Pamela Adinda; AMECEA Social Communications Reporter
