19 DAYS BEFORE ZAMBIA VOTES SIXTH PRESIDENT

>>What Losing or Winning Means to PF and UPND<<

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

Opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) presidential candidate Hakainde Hichilema may be the happiest to win an election on January 20, 2015, but turnout to be the most disappointed if he were to lose this time around.

He may still endure the pain because he has lost before and lost nothing in his livelihood. He can still milk his cows and sit on many boardroom meetings to make business decisions and see for once that maybe it was not meant for him to be President of this Great Nation.

But the UPND stewards might push for his standing down this time if he loses it. He will have to contend with the impatience of his aging MPs being in opposition almost for eternity and that of the younger MPs who feel they can command more respect and support more than what HH may have been managing. UPND will be tested for its real character.

Will it be Gary Kombo or Cornelius Mweetwa to lead the 'OUST HH' crusade? Or will they count the votes and see the small margin as something that could be closed and crossed in 2016 when Zambia goes to the proper election next year, 2016?

These are things that should be sitting on the side of the confidence that UPND has about winning this election and the fear of losing it.

Coming to the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) and its candidate Edgar Lungu.

If Lungu wins, he will pray to heaven for what God can do and be happy to be the sixth President. But if he were to lose, which is also possible, I fear he may lose everything, including his PF friends. 

I do not know if he will practice law anymore and still get the comfort he has enjoyed especially after being double minister and acting President.

On the other hand PF is a party that would find it difficult to stick together after losing. It has been in government for only a short time and exhibited the most potency for self-destruction or call it implosion.

The solace is that PF has been tested on this one, I mean confusion. But it has emerged shaky, exhausted from the near-sink but still rowing the boat and we do not know what has seemed to keep it together. Is it that it is a political party in power? Can they stand the confusion in opposition when there will be no longer anything to stick around for, something like ministerial positions and other favors that moths find in the closet of the rich?

Will those people who did not want Lungu to ascend to PF party presidency and claim a much contested candidature for presidency approve of his continuing at the helm. Will they not go all out and tell him "WE TOLD YOU SO". 

It is not easy to come out of a collapsed building, wounded and stay strong to retrieve some hope and valuable remnants, but only to be hit by another triple after-shock, and still stand again. PF came out of a serious succession infighting that has seen the party divided, with some people who were friends no longer embracing.

Will Mulenga Sata allow his late father's making-of-a-party just vanish in oblivion? Sylvia Masebo has been itching and Miles Sampa still does not believe that Lungu got the candidature by digging it deep out of his nails.

Then there is the Rainbow party in which Wynter Kabimba is a surrogate leader waiting as a vulture to consume PF disgruntles who may be led by Masebo or Sampa who are cooling waiting for their parliamentary term to end and decide the direction of things.

These are things that Lungu and his team must be ruminating over as they run this campaign that has been short of resources and seemingly a number of breakdowns which the campaign team has vehemently refuted.

I have left out the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) Nevers Mumba because all its members have chosen to sell their souls to either UPND’s Hakainde (no-middle-name) Hichilema or PF’ Edgar Chagwa Lungu. MMD’s Mumba is really running without the full support of his party members.

NN