11/01/2026
ECZ, WHAT DID YOU INTEND TO DO WITH THE EXCESS 1,788,405 BETWEEN ANNOUNCED AND ACTUAL FIGURES OF REGISTERED VOTERS?
Chishala Kateka – President, New Heritage Party
10 January 2026
The New Heritage Party has, since the last election, been issuing concern and caution, to the nation, with regard to the composition of the Electoral Commission of Zambia and its unlikely ability to deliver transparent, credible, free and fair elections.
We have issued statements, written to the Zambia Centre for Inter Party Dialogue, written to the Minister of Justice and had a meeting with ECZ itself. These efforts have not availed any positive results.
I am now alerting Zambians to the fact that ECZ is compromised and will not be able to conduct a transparent, credible, free and fair election.
At tables 5 and 6: Provisional Figure of Total Registered Voters, on page 6 of the Update on Final Statistics of the Mass Registration of Voters speech by the CEO of ECZ, Mr. Brown Kasaro, a figure of 8,861,918 was reported as being Total Registered Voters. As a result, Opposition and the public, have been basing calculations on this figure. A case in point being the very informative Muhabi Lungu articles.
Tucked away on the ECZ Website is a very detailed document entitled ‘Registered Voters Per Polling Station’. The total number of registered voters here, is only 7,073,513!!
Granted, the figure in the speech by the CEO was “provisional”, however a differential of 1,788,405 in the number of registered voters, a significant and whopping 25.28% variance from the actual, surely should be a cause of concern to any perceptive person even if not savvy with statistics.
New Heritage Party now asks:
1. What is the explanation of such a large differential of 1,788,405 between announced and actual figures?
2. Why has Mr. Kasaro not come forward to indicate to the nation that this significant 25.28% differential exists? The fact surely has not escaped him that people are relying on his earlier erroneous figures.
3. At what point, if at all, was he going to do so?
4. If Opposition did not become aware of this audacious differential, what did ECZ intend to do with it? Claim another hollow landslide victory?
Opposition, there is a very great need to focus on the real systemic threat to the issue of pooling resources to defend the democracy in our nation. We can only do this by being alert, defending our vote and working together. Those in power will not stop at anything to steal the vote. As we stated before, elections are won way way before elections and we now need to begin dismantling the web that they have spun. We certainly will not do so while we are so divided and quibbling about who becomes president – for if we continue on this trajectory, none of us shall succeed.
Elections will be lost before even the first ballot is cast. How was Opposition going to undo a 1,788,405 head-start?
