Zanzibar electoral body told to update vote register

The parties include Sauti ya Umma (SAU) and African Democratic Alliance (AD-TADEA).

AD-TADEA chairman Juma Ali Khatib, the party’s presidential contender last year, told The Guardian here this week that failure by ZEC to remove the names of the deceased in the permanent voter register may lead to irregularities in the votes.

However, ZEC has stuck to its guns, saying it won’t verify the registrar with the two parties accusing it of intending to rig the election by illegally using the names of log-deceased people.

“There are some people who use the deceased identity cards to vote on behalf of them. This will not be fair,” he said.
According to him, the election law did not allow a deceased person to vote but ZEC was trying to exploit the opportunity to favour a certain party.

He said the move was likely to bring about confusion and spark anger in other political parties that will participate in the election.

He however said that there were some people who may have died even before the rerun on March 20.
According to ZEC, about 500, 000 voters were registered in last year’s general election and at least 50,000 voters were verified to have died before voting.

Contributing on the motion, Sauti ya Umma (SAU) presidential candidate, Issa Mohammed Zonga, called ZEC to look into the matter as quickly as possible before the rerun election date to avoid any conflicts that may arise during the voting exercise.

“Some people will actually use the deceased voter cards to vote which is against the election law. It will be hard to monitor them but the situation can be avoided by ZEC verifying the names before the election,” he said.

For his part, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) Deputy Secretary General, Vuai Ali Vuai stressed that it was advisable for ZEC to verify the names of the voters before the poll rerun on March 20
He said the move would make it easier to identify those who were supposed to vote.

Reached for comments, ZEC Director of Election, Salum Kassim stressed that there will be no change in the permanent voter registrar which was used in last year’s election.

“Though the situation may be different this time after the nullification of last year’s election, ZEC had last year conducted the registrar verification and no further changes will be made,” he stressed.

In another development, Kassim asserted that there will be no changes in the poll rerun ballot papers schemed for March 20 despite calls made by political parties that will not take part in the election.

Last week, Civic United Front (CUF) Deputy General Secretary, Nassor Ahmed Mazru, asserted that his party candidates including its General Secretary who was also the presidential candidate in last year’s October General Election, Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad, had written letters to the director of election wanting their names to be removed from the ballot papers.

The Director of Election pointed out that the names of candidates would not be removed from the ballot papers despite calls from them wanting to be removed.

Kassim noted that ZEC had already decided to use the same ballot papers bearing the names of candidates who vied in last year’s election. “We are no longer going to print other ballot papers,” he stressed.