National Resistance Movement (NRM) Legal Director Enoch Barata has defended the party’s recent primary elections, saying claims of irregularities are largely hypothetical and do not reflect the actual voting process.
Speaking during NBS Frontline on Thursday, Barata dismissed critics who he said were “grappling to find something negative” about the ruling party’s primaries.
“There is an extensive search for something negative to latch on to,” he remarked. “I will be very happy to get a solid accusation against the NRM elections tribunal other than the hypotheticals being peddled.”
According to Barata, the majority of petitions lodged with the NRM tribunal have not challenged the conduct of the voting itself, but rather “the interruption of the elections at a different level.” He insisted that, by all measures, the primaries were a success.
“There was nothing unsuccessful about the NRM primaries, I can promise you,” he said
Barata stressed that democracy, in the NRM’s view, is a form of self-determination in which citizens decide the systems by which they are governed.
“NRM is just a 20-year-old party. Twenty years is barely an adult,” he noted. “The only people who are committed to a democratic process both internally and externally are the NRM.”