20 Feb 2019

Principal elections officer in Ghanzi, Mr Tshenolo Gabonthone, has warned politicians against voter trafficking. 

When addressing Ghanzi Party Liaison Committee (PLC) meeting recently, Mr Gabonthone said  although politicians were doing a great job in sensitising the public about the importance of registering for elections, some were into voter trafficking. 

Therefore, he urged  them to desist from trafficking, adding that electorates should make personal choices. 

He implored the public to continue disseminating election campaign information through word of mouth, saying without public participation, campaign efforts would be fruitless. 

One of the PLC members, a representative from Ghanzi North constituency office, Mr Jesus Mosokwe said voter trafficking issue was not an easy task to tackle because the law only punished the person who was being trafficked while the traffickers were left off the hook. 

Elections officer, Ms Galaletsang Kgari, cautioned against registering more than once, saying in some cases people re-register because they had lost their voter registration cards while others wanted to vote elsewhere. 

Ms Kgari explained that in cases where the voter registration card was lost, a person should make duplication and those who wanted to transfer should wait for transfer period. 

She said duplication of voters registration cards would be an ongoing process until the day before elections date. 

In addition,she said that registering twice could deny a person the right to vote because one might end up at a wrong polling station. 

Ms Kgari urged the public to always check if their information was captured correctly, once the voters roll was out. 

On other issues, the Ghazi PLC proposed to engage those who had registered during election period. 

The proposal was put forth by Mr Gabonthone and committee members acceded to the proposal. 

A participant, Mr Shane Kebadile, argued that they could not allow people to be part of and benefit from what they did not subscribe to. 

Another issue that popped-up, at the meeting was absence of polling stations at some settlements in CKGR. 

In response, Mr Gabonthone explained that polling stations in some areas in the CKGR, which were Gope, Metsiamanong ,Gugama were abolished after 2014 elections and the decision was informed by the fact that people had relocated. 

It emerged that there were two polling stations in CKGR, at Mothomelo and Molapo and the distance to the polling station from another settlement was over 70 km and the terrain said to be bad. 

Though the committee came with proposal on how to help the CKGR community to exercise their right to vote in the upcoming election, all seemed not feasible. 

One of them was to go to CKGR and register them and transport them during election to other polling stations, but the issue was that bad terrain would make it difficult for them to be transported during elections, particularly that some were elderly and ailing. 

Additionally, the committee felt that transporting voters to the other polling station could create an uneven ground and also compromise democracy. 

It was also argued that by registering them where there was no polling station would give them legitimate expectation to receive special dispensation during voting period. Ends