The Zanzibar government has said that the re-run of the general elections scheduled for March 20 will go on as planned whether international observer teams are present or not.
The Minister of State (Second Vice-President’s Office), Mohammed Aboud, told reporters here yesterday that the Isles government had no time to try to convince the international community to recognise or monitor the polls rerun.
The observer teams that participated in the original elections widely disapproved the abrupt nullification of the poll results by the Zanzibar Eectoral Commission (ZEC) chairman Jecha Salim Jecha.
ZEC has since been under intense internal and external pressure to complete the process of tabulating the results from that election rather than stage a re-run.
But according to Aboud, Zanzibar has its own laws and regulations for conducting elections which give ZEC the mandate to oversee the whole process without interference.
He said it is up to the observer teams to decide whether or not to participate in the election rerun by sending new observer delegations.
Aboud sought to assure Zanzibaris that preparations for the re-run were almost complete, with ZEC working in collaboration with the Isles Ministry of Finance to acquire all the necessary tools needed for the process.
