Zambia’s Elections: Vote counting in progress amidst social media restrictions
The PF also claims that several of its agents in the Southern province were attacked and chased out of voting places.
Zambians began counting votes on Friday following a tumultuous general election in which social media was shut down in the capital and President Edgar Lungu dispatched additional troops to three districts to prevent violence.
Two persons, including a ruling Patriotic Front (PF) party chairman, were killed in the North-Western region, a Hichilema stronghold, the president stated late Thursday, accusing his rival’s United Party for National Development (UPND) party.
Zambia’s election commission has opened a probe into the chairman’s assassination, which the UPND has condemned as a “distraction” technique.
The PF also claims that several of its agents in the Southern province were attacked and chased out of voting places.
Following pre-election disturbances, Lungu ordered the military to police the vote. He increased troops in three regions.
On Thursday, Nic Cheeseman, a British political scientist and author of “How to Rig an Election,” tweeted that there are concerns that the president is “exaggerating the level of violence and instability in opposition regions to justify” rejecting their results.
Since Hichilema voted in the capital Lusaka, social media access has been restricted, causing concerns among the population.
As the sun rose over Vera Chiluba elementary school in central Lusaka on Friday, bleary-eyed polling agents were still counting ballot papers in a classroom, sorting through the final batches.
Many of the more than seven million registered voters waited for hours after polls closed at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) to cast their ballots, with many of them queuing for long periods of time.
The presidential, legislative, and local government elections are likely to have final official results by Sunday, though fragmentary and unofficial tallies have already circulated.
Poll monitors have warned that when the results are released, there may be chaos.
Results in Lusaka, a bustling city of more than 3.3 million people, and the central Copperbelt province, Africa’s second-largest copper producer, are expected to determine the outcome.
Hichilema, who is running against Lungu for the third time, barely lost by a few hundred thousand votes in 2016 and by an even smaller margin in a by-election the year before.
