Kgalalelo Setlhare
Despite a few glaring glitches in the elections, the Independent Electoral Commission has received the thumbs up from African Center Governance political analyst Dr Nqobile Zulu, who is serving as an observer in the elections.
Dr Zulu said given that these elections had three ballot papers, the commission fared well and would learn from the few mistakes that occurred. Even more encouraging was that the commission was transparent and acknowledged these mistakes.
He gave the commission a 75 to 85% rating, saying the fact that most of the staffers who had been officiating voting stations were new and young, confirms that the commission did exceptionally well and any event of the election magnitude was bound to have glitches.
“There are always hitches, it should be expected that there would be hitches coming. But I want to come back in the context of the hitches. This year there has been a development in that there were three ballot papers,” said Zulu, adding that could have been attributed to some of the hitches.
On whether he could declare the elections as free and fair, Zulu said what was clear was that voters had been given the right to exercise their democratic right to vote to an extent that even those who were still on the queue after the scheduled closure were allowed to vote.
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