25 June 2011
Former chairperson of the elections monitoring non-governmental organisation (NGO) Coalition 2001 Ngande Mwanajiti has said it is wrong for any donor agency to support Caritas Zambia to monitor this year’s elections because the civil society organisation has alreadytaken a partisan position.
Mr Mwanajiti, who was also the chairperson of the 2006 Committee for a Clean Campaign (CCC), said it was no longer a secret that Caritas Zambia and some of its staff had taken a partisan position.
” The basics of election monitoring are that an election monitor needs to be impartial. Caritas Zambia is on record in the media that some of their members are partisan.
“Some people associated with Caritas have taken a position. Therefore, those of us that are associated with the MMD have reason to be concerned about this matter,” said the former executive director for the NGO Inter-African Network for Human Rights and Development(Afronet).
He said an election monitor is supposed to behave like an umpire who should be impartial and objective in their conduct.
Mr Mwanajiti said Caritas had taken a partisan position and should have stayed away from the monitoring of the elections.
He said the involvement of an NGO that had a partisan slant could cause unnecessary confusion during the elections.
“An election is a competitive issue and it produces results so imagine if you have a monitor that has taken a stance? There is a danger that they will want their pre-conceived agenda to prevail,” he said.
On June 16 2011, some NGOs including Caritas Zambia, AVAP, SACCORD, FODEP, Operation Young Vote (OYV), Transparency International Zambia (TIZ), Young Women in Action (YWA) and the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group announced that they would monitor this year’s elections as a coalition.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) which is the lead donor of the Coalition has since appointed Caritas Zambia as the lead NGO to spearhead the coalition.
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