It’s not possible for an Electoral Commission of fair-minded persons to appointment a person of Mr Brown Kasaro’s background and record as Chief Electoral Officer of the Electoral Commission of Zambia.
During the 2016 General Election, ECZ established the National Results Centre (NRC) at Lusaka’s Mulungushi International Conference Centre for purpose of announcing the 2016 election results.
Servers were configured in the Commission Data Centre for the receipt of results from the constituency totalling centres.
In the 2016 elections, ECZ allowed each political party with a presidential candidate to accredit two agents to witness the first level verification process i.e. results electronically transmitted from constituencies.
There were two levels of verification of results.
1. Results electronically transmitted from constituencies to the National Results Centre.
2. Second level of verification after receiving hardcopies physically and faxed.
At the first level, only select staff and accredited political agents where allowed access. But only one agent was allowed in the verification centre per shift. Accredited officials whether ECZ staff or agents were NOT allowed to carry cell phones and were thoroughly scrutinised by state police as instructed by the ECZ.
The first level verification centre was co-managed by the Director ICT and Director Electoral Operations but accreditation was done by the Director ICT – Mr Brown Kasaro.
In the event, on day 2 of the results transmission one of the accredited agents identified an “intruder” who had not been part of the team. He was taken to the police at the NRC when interrogated in presence of senior staff and police confessed that he was given the special accreditation by the Director ICT.
Later information reached the Commission that the said officer ICT had been meeting with members of main opposition and a selected cooperating partners.
He was then arrested.
And Mr Kasaro also had alleged corruption issues. He was called before the Commission to explain himself because Special Branch had informed the Commission about his offshore accounts. Mr Kasaro said he was saving for his children’s fees. When asked about the source of the said money he couldn’t answer he just started apologising. He was warned by the Commission – otherwise he would have been in jail.
Mr Kasaro is not wise. If he was wise he would have declined the job.
But the UPND insisted that Chavula was used to rig how come the person who helped Chavula is now the CEO of the same institution?
There’s something seriously wrong here and we won’t accept the appointment of a person with such a highly questionable and easily verifiable background.
Fred M’membe
President of the Socialist Party