Mike Mulongoti
People’s Party president Mike Mulongoti says it is impossible to believe that one voting stream recorded over 500 votes within 12 hours in the August 11 elections because one voter took an average five minutes to cast their ballot.
Mulongoti who also served as Chairman for elections in the MMD NEC and Minister in varies Ministries has charged that the election was a fraud.
Vote counting at St Marys School during 2016 elections.
“This election was a fraud. If you just do some calculations, you will discover that if it took five minutes for one person to vote, then in one hour, it is only 12 people who vote and in 12 hours, it is 124. We know that our friends in Southern Province are so gifted that in 12 hours, thousands had voted, even our friends in Matero, they were able to vote with that unbelievable speed. Our friends in other countries take days or even weeks to complete voting but here it was only 12 hours,” Mulongtoi said.
“When you take 3.7 million voters divided by 10,800 voting streams, you get an average 342 voters per stream. Now if you say every person took at least five minutes to cast their votes; so then you multiply 342 by five, you will get 1,710 minutes needed for each one of them to vote. How many hours are in 1,710 minutes? That’s 28 hours 30 minutes. But in Zambia, polls open for 12 hours only, how did some voting stream record over 342, over 500 votes? Go to Vera Chiluba polling station in Lusaka, they have about 8,000 registered voters, over 5,000 voted, find out how they did that in 12 hours.”
He said the figures that were coming out of some constituencies like Mandevu in Lusaka were not making sense.
“You know that Heroes Stadium seating capacity is about 60,000, that’s a lot of people voting in one day. Now you can imagine that Mandevu Constituency recorded over 80,000 voters, 59,000 of those voting for PF. Do you know the kind of logistical nightmare it would be to get over 80,000 voters to cast their ballots for the president, MP, councillor, mayor, and referendum? How did all that happen in 12 hours?” Mulongoti asked.