Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda endorsing NEC’s proposal said: “It is meant to clear doubts that always overwhelm the country’s elections.”
Pinda was responding to a question by opposition leader in the House, Freeman Mbowe during the Premier’s Question Session.
Mbowe wanted to know as where NEC got the mandate to start working on the new system, which has proved failure in two African countries of Ghana and Kenya.
He also queried as to why NEC started working on the plan without involving key electoral stakeholders as part of clearing doubts.
Responding, the Premier described NEC’s action as good endeavours geared to make the voting process more secure and boost confidence in the accuracy of the results.
“It is true that election is an important democratic process, but putting in place modern technologies, which are for the best performance of the process is a very good idea too,” Pinda said.
He stressed: “I don’t think if NEC has bad intention on this, but its intention is meant to provide answers to the complaints on the authenticity of election results.”
The PM assured the public that NEC is full of skilled people, who can come up with a better technology geared to bolster the election process.
According to Pinda, Tanzania might come up with a better system following mistakes seen in Kenya and Ghana’s elections.
“I still believe that NEC might also come up with an alternative means if the biometric system fails as it happened to the Kenya’s elections,” he said, adding: “I don’t have detailed information on the alternative system that NEC might develop.”
NEC chairman Damian Lubuva on Monday, announced plans of introducing the biometric electoral system, when speaking at a news conference to welcome 17 delegates from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) who are in Tanzania to exchange experiences on the electoral process.
Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) introduced the system during elections held on March 4, but the system was replete with technical glitches.
Biometric technology can be used to store unique physical characteristics including fingerprints and facial scans of voters in a database for identification.
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Quelle/Source: IPPmedia, 19.04.2013
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