THE ILLEGITIMATE PRESIDENTIAL JACKET AND COMMONWEALTH BROKERED DIALOGUE

The Commonwealth is a respectful institution. It respects the fact that Edgar Lungu wears the Presidency Jacket in Zambia.

Other than that, the Commonwealth is led by an intelligent woman, Barrister Patricia Scotland, who is the institution’s Secretary General.

She is intelligent, knowing that wearing a PRESIDENTIAL JACKET is not a big deal. However, she is fully aware that what matters about it all is how that PRESIDENTIAL JACKET was woven. She is interested in the threads in the cloth that made that Jacket.

This is why when she visited Zambia Barrister Scotland brokered a truce between our two leaders, President Edgar Lungu and opposition UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema.

She was even deliberate when she engaged the two leaders asking them to forget about the 2016 elections, and yet called for them to engage in meaningful dialogue.

The two leaders agreed to a process of dialogue which was to be facilitated through the office of the Commonwealth Secretary General, whereby a roadmap of reforms pursuant to Commonwealth principles of good practice, governance and the rule of law, can be undertaken in preparation for the 2021 elections.

Now it is this truce brokered by the Commonwealth, to be done under the guide of its peace envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, which has become troubling to the ruling Patriotic Front leadership—President Lungu and his minders.

But why is it so?

The first thing is this, the dialogue process is coming to correct the past wrongs that happened about our democracy and its pinnacle, the 2016 election.

Barrister Scotland is fully aware of this and did not want to miss a point on this fact.

She said: “I believe Zambians can rely on these leaders to wholeheartedly engage in this process and to craft a democratic, sustainable pathway which will lead the country not just to successful elections in 2021, but beyond.”

Therefore this dialogue is a process of reconciliation of the country’s political activities that have lost the values of democracy.

It is well known that reconciliation cannot happen without referring back to the issues that got parties to defer or caused differences. Dialogue is meant to clear the decks about “what did we do wrong”, “why did we do wrong” and “how can we do better next time”.

The Patriotic Front knows that if the Commonwealth through its peace envoy Gambari moderating the dialogue, the parties to the dialogue will look at, more than just other governance issues, the 2016 election shall not escape close scrutiny. It is that scrutiny that will question how the PRESIDENTIAL JACKET Edgar Lungu is wearing was made.

The Patriotic Front leaders know that the election was fraud. And that election is the cloth from which the PRESIDENTIAL JACKET that Lungu wears today was made. Obvious, the illegitimate threads in that cloth—all the wrongs that were committed in favour of Lungu during the election—will be pulled out one by one during dialogue, until the PRESIDENTIAL JACKET is threadbare.

Once such happen, the Patriotic Front leadership knows that President Lungu’s back will be embarrassingly exposed in the face of the Commonwealth. Electoral Commission of Zambia will be convicted as a tailor that made an illegitimate PRESIDENTIAL JACKET.

The Patriotic Front leadership also fears a report of recommendations on Zambia’s broad governance reforms from the dialogue process being credited to a body of international pedigree such as the Commonwealth that has means and influence to hold Governments accountable.

That is why the Patriotic Front do not want the Commonwealth to be at the centre of the political dialogue in this country—fearing to expose an illegitimate PRESIDENTIAL JACKET.

THE KKK CREATURE EMERGES IN ZAMBIA AGAINST CITIZENS

They do not hunt their opponents wearing masks, with guns and knives, but every each day they have a consistent desire to bring fear, condemnation and smell of prison to those who oppose government

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

What we should think, think about and make meaning from various issues happening in the way we are governed is no longer our democratic birthright, but a practice defined by the Patriotic Front culture of misgovernment. This is because of Kambwili—information minister, Kampyongo—home affairs minister and Kanganja—Inspector General of Police. Notice the first letter of their names: it comes to triple K, giving Zambia its own version of Ku Klux Klan.

WHEN JOURNALISM GOES WRONG

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

Okay! There are the ‘guardian angels’ of society wearing ‘exaggerated’ public interest apparel, flying around with sharp noses and bellies of ink. They are so sharp that their tongues can build or destroy, ink gorged from their bellies can heal or poison habits and their craft fingers can soothe or strangle lives, while light from their flashy eyes can amuse or abuse children. The decency of society is at their peril.

Society and its citizens, the stay-at-home kind and those who go by the natural duties of life—growing food, educating the masses, treating diseases and building cities rely on the skills of the guardian angels to bring them home an update of the daily events of the outside world. What people cannot see through their eyes, cannot hear through their ears and cannot comprehend through the bulk information, the media steps in to do the noble duty. You know the kind of good news, the beauty of new places being constructed, the scientific discovery of a panacea drug, government creating new jobs and all sorts of “blah… blah…blah” in print and on air, the media makes you make sense.

These guardian angels also collect, analyse, select and communicate the political decrees and those granted privileged positions of duties say. They bring good and bad news to the ordinary of society and also tell those in privileged positions about the ordinary lives, about the struggles of the ordinary world. 

Call them the press and fourth estate of the State, they also expose the privileged, granted responsibilities to serve society but end up abusing those duties—the baldheads and blood-clots (political crooks and tenderpreneures) that take what is not theirs and leave the widows and the orphans crying. 

The more the long-noses expose what makes the widows and orphans cry, the more they get the credit and increase those who admire their apparel, identical to their characteristic described here. 

The guardian angels also poke their noses and craft fingers in the lives of ordinary citizens, those who do extraordinary things for the good of society—like tending to the sick, volunteering to quench the neighbours’ house on fire, saving a bird trapped in the mesh of a fence and all kind of duties that are virtuous.  That is noble duty, and it is worth to call professional. It is truth and fair as long as it does not judge wrongly. 

Every rational ordinary member, with the gift to wisdom to see right and wrong, knows credibility is about objectivity, accuracy and fairness. That is serving public interest.

The wrong is when the events of those seeking the privileged position compete for mandate and seek the votes of the ordinary. Biases abound, you can even see the guardian angels lose their responsibilities and duties to society, flapping around like idiots. Then you know they have lost their bearings and credibility completely; don’t just trust anything they say at first sight about one candidate or another. Worse is when they become the Vuvuzelas, trumpeting noise for political despots as news and entertainment.

Worse is when the angels’ wings and faces turn yellow, and get to turn lives of the ordinary private people into entertainment. There is wonder why the lives of rebellious others in the lower base—those that have chosen their hedonistic path to the land at the teetering edge of the cliff; those seeking the aesthetic life to the extreme—should  make news entertaining. 

Why sensationalise as news the lives of those drowned in pleasure and imbibing in the intoxications of all kind—drugs, alcohol, and exhibitionist apparel that expose their bodies? Why romanticise than criticise and not defend the actions of entertainment protagonists whose music is so explicit insulting, exalting the privacy and pleasures of adulthood and lure into experiment the innocence of adolescence? 

These are problems that social agents must deal with to minimize harm on the closed families and individuals whose lives are now prised wide to lurid sex and drugs images and stories.

These are also things that the serenity of a good natural, call it closer-to-heaven life, abhor. Closer-to-heavens abhor the Red Light Street life and do not want its sexy dances, lyrics and skimpy fashion to come into homes and corrupt their minds and those of children.  

Among the long-noses, the craft-fingers, the flashy-eyes and photographic-mind, there are those who have found fun-fare to salivate upon the nudity of every man and woman and they produce adult pornography and sometimes innocent children they have lured in their snares, undressed and defiled—all for money. Or is it freedom of expression too?

Now! Should these sharp-long-noses, craft-fingers and snappy-flashing eyes and photographic-mind angels, start going into the lower world and bring these things into the lives of the moderate ordinary, and corrupt the good society of morals? 

Another something about the sharp-noses, the long-craft-fingers, the flashy-eyes and photographic-mind: they have tended to ply their duties beyond boundaries and sneak into private ordinary lives of other members of society.

They enjoy the freedom to preach to society morality that they themselves sometimes fail to uphold. They do so based on the principle of ‘public interest’ they claim, even without consent or commission from society.

This includes taking pictures of private activities of the intoxicated alcohol imbibing, skimpy dressed temperamental rebels in the world of entertainment.

Yes, it is known that even good fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles and aunts, just like cousins, sometimes sneak into these entertainment places. They have side-stepped to seek happiness and sometimes chosen to indulge with just eyes. You know, ‘just looking’. But this sometimes has yielded to physical contact—who could resist the highway to pleasure after being drawn into the trap? That is life!

However, everyone knows and these, too, do: If any of the persons they are responsible to would know that friends and family members they care for go to the basement life, they would definitely be mad with them. Really mad! Like a wife shouting to the husband “who are you accountable to!” Anyway, that is life of choices and voyeurism.

The question is: does the practice of being sharp-long-nosed, ink-belly-filled and craft-fingers license them freedom to bring nudity from restricted public nightclubs into pages and motion pictures in the homes of those who have chosen decency. 

Is that not being extreme and interfering with the private lives of the morally upright? Especially if the pages and screens on which the private nights of those who choose to imbibe, dress skimpy and dance—close to stripping-off, are the same pages and screens on which the vital account of daily life affecting the ordinary are printed and beamed.

Wouldn’t society demand that these salacious pictures be kept out of public domain because those who want to see them go and pay for them at the nightclubs and entertainment venues? 

The old grandma will not sneak out at night to go and watch nudeness, but in her thick glasses trying to update are senile mind with the world news by reading a newspaper may be intruded by the nudity that she does not agree with. 

You claim the public’s right to know, and justify that nudity is happening out there hence, the pictures are printed to tell parents and wives to become more vigilant not to let their loved ones stray out at night. 

If your claimed purpose has ever been achieved, print the story of how many parents have their vigilance increased due to the naked pictures.

The commerce of entertainment goes on uninterrupted right under the license of government’s nose. Tell the country how much tax government collects or is failing to collect from the show-biz industry, then ordinary citizens would debate that.

Inform society how families have been destroyed, marriages broken and children orphaned due to husbands and fathers who patronize the night life, then society will be concerned and debate. Show them just pictures with captions clapping the nakedness then you are completely missing the intention. 

Mass media is a powerful tool and it is called the fourth estate of democracy. Wouldn’t its role to bring out real issues that make good citizens engage in robust debate about good governance serve better purpose than the naked pictures? 

Wouldn’t the issues of how to address crime to make society safe for everyone make much sense, just as the issues of raising public and individual health make appropriate news?

Interaction with a good media educates and builds a good society and a bad media foretells the obvious. People may selectively choose what to read and see in the print media and watch and listen to on television. But when the accessible source of their choices merges decency and indecency, then people are denied choices for the complete selective perceptions.

Poisoned groundnuts are the best bait for rats, the rats will come to eat and die. The same is nudity in the media and society. It corrupts, not the senile grandma in thick glasses, but the young people who are still curious will be lured by the pictures of weekend versions of the newspapers to seek the nightclub life and experience. Others may realise it is not their taste, but many more may be glued and that is why every night those nightclubs are filled as someone somewhere introduced them to that life through some form of lurid stories and images, mental or actual.

NN

Zambia’s Ruling Patriotic Front Junta Is Nowhere Nearer On Promoting Media Freedoms

The Edgar Lungu Led Junta Is Using Public Institutions Like The Police, Revenue Authority and the Independent Broadcasting Authority To Fish Out Cases Against The Media To Intimidate Them And Create Fear So That They Do Not Cover The Opposition

 

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

Politicians, one day I may be one but probably with exceptional values, think they have the free world to themselves. They think they can have both worlds of being responsible and irresponsible and get away with it. And when the media plays its adversary role to interpret and criticise their irresponsibility they will walk all the way to find means to shut these media up.

Media's role is not just about being a conveyor belt of these politicians’ empty statements, actions and wishes. Media sees through those statements and actions, threshes out truth and exposes falsehoods  and laughs, sometimes with ridicule and unreserved disrespect as well as harshness, at political stupidity albeit politicians not wishing and unwilling to see it as such. 

The Patriotic Front government in Zambia under President Edgar Lungu is such a park of politicians who don’t want to accept the role of the media, and it is not stopping anywhere nearer now from intimidating the media. 

Just before elections The Post, the country’s most credible private newspaper, had its offices closed and its equipment seized, ostensibly over a case of unpaid tax. The Zambia Revenue Authority still keeps the newspaper shut. The paper has not been able to print in its full texture and format ever since, as it has been left to improvise to maintain its circulation.

As that was not enough, immediately after elections the not so Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) was coerced, not from anywhere else but State House, to suspend the license of the only credible private television, Muvi TV. IBA claimed the television station broadcast material that was inciting violence following a disputed election. 

Largely, the concerned public thought the suspension of the license for the television station was meant to deny opposition leaders a meaningful mass medium through which they could build their case of a stolen election and balanced coverage of the proceedings of the presidential election petition.

Fast forward! 

Prime TV, another television station based in Lusaka, the country’s capital city, is the latest victim of government intimidation. Police are using one of the draconian laws, the State Security statute, to intimidate, bring fear and coerce the station to release footage of a meeting held by Hakainde Hichilema, the leader of United Party for National Development (UPND), the country’s biggest opposition. 

The police want the footage to build a case of treason against the opposition leader who is believed to have defiantly declared during the meeting that he will never ever recognise Edgar Lungu as the country’s legitimately elected President.

The police wrote a letter asking the Prime TV owners to avail the footage of their coverage of the opposition meeting. The television station broadcast a story based on the letter from the police, which the police are now treating as a leak of a State Secret.   

“Today (October 13, 2016) we summoned Gerald Shawa, 42 who is Managing Director of Prime TV and Makokwa Kozi, 35, the acting Station Manager for the television Station in connection with a leaked government document which the Zambia Police addressed to the Station's legal counsel requesting for footage of the Press briefing that was held by the UPND on 10th October, 2016,” said the police spokeswoman, Esther Katongo.

The police spokeswoman said the duo were “Warned and Cautioned for the offence of Communication of Certain Information contrary to section 4 (1)(b) of the State Security Act Chapter 111 of the Laws of Zambia, Section 4 (1) (b) of the State Security Act”.

According to Katongo the Act the police are citing states that “Any person who has in his possession or under his control any document or information which he has had access owing to his position as a person who holds such office or has held such office and who Communicates the same to any person other than a person to whom he is authorised to communicate, commits an offence”.

What the police are doing is nowhere nearer to meeting professional standards. And One need not to be specialized in media law to notice that the police are misapplying the State Security Act and doing the most stupid thing—to bring cooked up charges to intimidate anyone and any institution that aids the opposition to have their voice heard.

The question that most people are asking is: “when did a police call-out or document to a private individual or corporate citizen to avail themselves to law enforcement ever become a State Security. 

BJ

WE CAN AFFORD FUEL SUBSIDIES, BUT....

The truth is PF management of the economy, which is poor planning and wastefulness, leading to draining of national reserves, damaged the base for the country to sustain subsidies.

And it must be accepted that it would completely be a disaster if the government continued to provide these subsidies on borrowed money, as we already know we are in dare need of an IMF bailout now.

Remember PF had reduced subsidies on fuel just after coming into office and the jubilation all over by PF cadres was that the country would have more money for infrastructure projects. Surprising, the government continued to borrow and embark on projects they could not pay for using money from freed from subsidies.
Now all fuel products have gone up.

PF cadres still believe this measure will easily benefit the economy, release money into the economy to develop infrastructure as well as stabilise the price of fuel as more companies will participate in the importation of the commodity. No! It will not.

The Zambian market, due to other factors in the economy, has never made fuel price increase to benefit anyone let alone production. What it has always done is to increase the cost of production and trigger price increases across the whole economy, leading to high cost of living.

It is economically unrealistic to think of any positive benefits from a rise in fuel by more than thirty dollars in an economy like Zambia that has already got a high cost of labour instigated by the State Imposed Minimum Wage.

All productive sectors will have to find a way to pass the thirty dollars extra cost on fuel on to the consumer so that they can respect the minimum wage to keep the same number of workers on the State Wage and offset other overheads resulting from fuel hikes. 
NN

OPPOSITION PARTIES KEEN ON DEFEATING PF IN 2016

    >>But Can They Find The Right Campaign Messages<<

President Edgar Lungu may just benefit from late Sata's image in the 2016 polls

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

Elections are won far away before the polling day. It is the campaign messages that build all the way to the polling day that give the opposition the favour of opinion polls.

But it is not every message that wins an election; people must interpret those messages into their social lives and see the reality.

Therefore opposition leaders in Zambia must not be cheated, reliance on the negative views in The Post Newspaper will not help them win the 2016 elections against the ruling Patriotic Front.  

The first reason is that the PF message of pro-poor policies is still well-grounded among the call boys, necessity entrepreneurs and others who could be categorized as the street-wise life earners.

Taxi drivers in Lusaka own their own cars because Sata and his vice President Guy Scott bought them the cars on loan which they have paid back. The salary hikes, enforced through the minimum wage, for shopkeepers and unskilled public workers across the labour market is still a delight.

ZAMBIA CAN STILL GET MORE OUT OF ITS MINERALS

<<BUT IT HAS TO LOOK BEYOND TAX BENEFITS>>

PART1

Barrick Lumwana Mine in Solwezi

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

The uncertainty over one of Zambia’s mining operations closing down has been settled and put behind the country’s concerns.

Lumwana mine in Solwezi of North Western Province faced closure. This followed indications by Barrick Gold of Canada that it was pulling out and placing on care its open pit copper mine in the first week of January due to unfavourable tax measures announced by government.

Government last December introduced new royalty taxes of up to 8 percent for underground mining and 20 percent for open-pit operations, claiming the measure was intended to give the country more benefits from its mineral wealth.

However, government made a last ditch, reversing the tax regime in a move that State House announced was intended to serve 4,000 jobs that were going to be lost if the mine was forced to close.