Zambians waited Friday for presidential election results that could trigger dispute after a violence-tinged campaign between the two leading candidates in a country usually known for its relative stability.
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The presidential race is likely to be a straight contest between incumbent Edgar Lungu of the Patriotic Front (PF) and Hakainde Hichilema, the leader of the opposition United Party for National Development (UNPD).
The Electoral Commission of Zambia released the first results more than 25 hours after polls officially closed, and said delays had been experienced in transmitting the tallies from regional counting centers amid a high turnout.
Early results from the election were expected late last night.
Zambian President Edgar Lungu on Wednesday said it will be easy for him to win the elections because he has no formidable opposition.
“They are trying to generate the results”.
Voting got off to an anxious start in some places, with police stepping in to control people waiting in a long queue stretching nearly half way around the block at one polling station in the capital, Lusaka.
Mr Hichilema, a close second, alleged there were voting irregularities.
Zambia’s elections remained largely peaceful as the country’s electorate headed to the polls Thursday, with five choices to make. The former Nigeria President has been out monitoring the elections as polling stations open in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital on Thursday morning.
When Lungu narrowly beat Hichilema in a presidential election past year to replace the late Michael Sata, Turnout slumped to just 32 percent from almost 54 percent in 2011.
The contest pits Lungu’s populist economic policies, including higher taxes on the country’s crucial mining sector and increased infrastructure investment, against the reform-minded outlook of Hichilema, who is offering closer ties to the International Monetary Fund and cuts to government expenditure.
Last month, campaigning in the city was halted for 10 days to reduce the violence.
Zambia, in contrast to neighbours like Angola and Zimbabwe, has escaped war and serious upheaval in recent decades. “I promise to serve you even better”, Lungu said at his final rally.
Chris Akufuna, spokesman for the Electoral Commission of Zambia, said: “We had put everything in order to ensure that voting began in time but some unforeseen factors happened in some places…”
Zambia, ruled by Kenneth Kaunda from 1964 until 1991, recorded GDP growth of 3.6 percent previous year – its slowest since 1998. Zambia, Africa’s second largest exporter of copper, saw its economic growth shrink to around 3 percent in 2015 as a result of China’s diminishing interest in the metal and a global downfall of prices.
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Either side is “unlikely to concede defeat without a fight, but we are hoping that this fight happens not in the streets but in the courts”, said Dimpho Motsamai, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria.
