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

ZAMBIA NEEDS PROSPERITY SOLUTIONS NOW

>>Never Smiling, Proud & Free In Poverty<<

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

We cannot continue lying to ourselves that we are a free and proud nation, when all we got is still the enthusiasm of freedom from colonial rule, yet we still cannot wake up smiling at the rising sun as a Zambia of choices granted its people an embrace of prosperity.

We cannot cheat ourselves any more that our mere beliefs in progress can produce best economic development realities.

Beliefs, like slogans, are just desires that do not give the country the best economic choices that can ensure the country do the right things to raise the money needed to build schools, build hospitals and ensure youth employment for thousands leaving secondary schools, colleges and universities.

NOWHERE POLICIES AWAIT ZAMBIANS

>>Plot .1 Candidates Lack Clear Value-Packed Policies<<

Mumba, Lungu and Sinkamba

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

We could vote to grow marijuana and get high by selling it for millions of dollars as propagated by Green Party leader, Peter Sinkamba.

Or we could all go back to mosaic times with a new Moses sent by heavens, United Party for National Development presidential hopeful Hakainde Hichilema where everything will be as cheaper as manna from heaven—cheaper fuel, fertiliser and Mealie-meal.

Or maybe we could get spiritual and kneel down to pray for a fortune, sharing in God’s favour enjoyed by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy candidate Nevers Mumba.

If not that then we could as well retain the legacy—a legacy of pissing off foreign investors with obnoxious policies while borrowing more for village universities and road-linked Zambia, yet fail to spend international bonus funds for greenhouse management due to lack of better ideas. This is the legacy on which the ruling Patriotic Front candidate Edgar Lungu is riding on.

Any of this is what Zambia expects after it goes to January 20, 2015 presidential elections caused by the death of President Michael Sata.

After listening to what our presidential hopefuls are saying, we are under no illusion to expect less economic development. This is because it is not the best best presidential candidate with best ideas who will win.

If it were not like that, then the electorates were going to listen to clear value policy messages and programmes differentiating those vying for the top office.

ZAMBIA NEEDS TO BREAK AWAY FROM BAD POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF 27 YEARS OF KENNETH KANUDA RULE

By Nalubinge Ngwende

Kenneth Kaunda

Zambia’s first president Kenneth Kaunda was, is and will forever remain a tyrant whose irreparable damage to the country’s political and economic culture will never have anyone take responsibility for, unless the country stops extoling this man and break away from his ways.  

The first step to severing our present and future from Kaunda’s bad examples of managing this country is to stop seeing him as an infallible hero and ask him to apologise.

A hero, he is, for being among the freedom fighters that fought for our independence. But a closer look at how he dispensed his power as the country’s first President, the heroism is lost. Kaunda becomes a villain that lost Zambia’s battles to safeguard democracy and ensure sustainable economic growth, leaving the country in an abyss of economic darkness and political intolerance. 

As first President of this Southern African Nation that had vibrant and intelligent opposition political leadership and seen as a very wealth newly Independent nation, Kaunda’s arrogance to monopolise/personalise ideas of running the country did extensive damage to democracy and economic activity of the independent Zambia.  

Kaunda authored and engraved the economic miseries the country grapples with today for the 27 years he remained President. Today at 50 years of Independence, the country still struggles to rewrite and offer solutions to the problems that KK created during his over two decades rule.

ZAMBIA YEARNS FOR KNOWLEDGE BASED, FRIENDLIER POLICE YET THAT SEEMS TOO FAR

By Nyalubinge Ngwende

Zambia Police needs a human face

Zambia looks forward to a time when the face of brutality will be stripped from the country’s police, making it an organization of law and order that is more of a service other than a force whose moment at any place of citizens activity exudes fear.

The police force in Zambia struggles with an identity problem. 

Looking back, since turning to multiparty democracy in 1991, with a spirit of growing and promoting human rights, officials in government and senior police officers have labored to convince members of the public that the Zambia Police is a service and not a force.

Through media and public pronouncement at both official and social gatherings police superiors repeat the tagline of being a service. Unfortunately there is completely close to nothing to show why they should wear that civil tag.

Not even Government has convincing reforms to point at in view of making the police a service.

CATHOLIC CHURCH: WHITHER SATA, THY HUMBLE SERVANT?

BY NYALUBINGE NGWENDE

How painful it is to the Catholic Church, whose nuns, priests and bishops threw their weight behind the Patriotic Front in the run to the 2011 elections, assuming Sata would govern Zambia in a much humane way after winning presidency. Nuns and some priests even went to the extent of telling congregants that any of them who would not vote PF was not a genuine Catholic.

The Catholic vote was vital; Sata won the election and made his promises known. Taking oath of office using the bible, the President-elect declared that he was going to govern by the 10 commandments.

Sata emerging from a Corolla

Vital among the promises was to give Zambians a people driven constitution. “It was all going to happen in 90 Days”, he assured the nation that was agog with a historic defeat of the MMD.

The first few Sundays he attended mass was like the long awaited ‘God-Send’ finally arrived to reign over Zambia.

On September 25, only two days after taking oath of office Sata was in church. Father Charles Chilinda, the parish priest, prayed that God would grant the president wisdom, knowledge and good judgment so he could effectively govern the people of Zambia.

His supporters, mostly Catholic Faithfull’s, went agog—posting on social media the President’s pictures arriving at church in a Toyota Corolla with only two vehicles as escort. Other pictures appeared with Sata sitting in the middle of the congregants and kneeling in the pew of the Church. The blubs on the pictures screamed: ‘humble servant of the people’ and ‘man of action’.

“He is really a simple president. Where do you find a Head of State who can just walk and sit right in the middle where ordinary people are? “We were looking for vehicles when he came, only to see one small car in front and another one behind,” said a congregant, Lisa Mubita.

“Sata was driven into the Church like an ordinary citizen and walked to a pew in the middle of the Church. When he arrived, he took time greeting his neighbours before he sat to follow the service.”

It will be good to see fresh and recent pictures of any Sunday this year showing Sata arriving in a Corolla and piously kneeling in the pews of the St Ignatius Cathedral, with hands of other church members stretched towards him and the wife, Christine, as they pray to God to bless the first couple.

If you are like me looking for that scene, you would bet and lose your index finger because this will not happen; President Sata has changed and he is not listening to anyone.

Sata has ruffled the feathers of the Catholic Church with impunity. He has dissented from almost all of the things that the clergy thought would come with a politician who sought the blessings of the church as his first assignment in the Presidential office.

It even baffles, not just the Catholic clergy, but the whole Zambian population that Sata who pleaded with the people that he would govern them differently—end the abuse by the police, deliver democracy other than tyranny, objectively deal with corruption and happily give the people of Zambia a constitution in record time—is doing the opposite.

When the news happens today that relates President Sata and the Catholic Church, it is in bad taste. It is about the catholic bishops chastising the President to behave and do right things or end up badly, or about Sata making calls to threaten bishops who are speaking against his mischievousness of consequences.

Eastern province Diocese Bishop George Lungu has been the latest target of Sata’s threats. The bishop received threats from Sata for allowing constitution advocates to converge at St Antanazio Parish to denounce government failures.

Sata is reported by online media of telling bishop Lungu to watch his steps and mark his boundaries by stirring clear of the constitution debate for if he did not, he’ll be sorted out.

President Sata is an absent head of state. He hardly drives on the road, as he uses a chopper to fly instead of driving in a Corolla. The chopper takes him straight to the airport on his foreign trips or to some place where he is pursuing many of his necessities that are proving costly to the economy.

If you are a journalist who needs to catch up with Sata and get a quick sound bite from the head of state as he lands on a pavilion, it is like looking for horns on the head of a dog. Sata does not talk to the media—he shakes a few hands of his cabinet members and security chiefs before disappearing; from a chopper onto a plane.

His absence is conspicuous. Three years into office he is yet to address a press conference. This absence sometimes turns out to be more disgraceful than baffling. He missed the wedding of one of his sons, choosing fly on a working holiday to London straight from Addis Ababa where he had gone for official engagements.

On return he only appeared at one meeting in Katuba constituency to campaign in a by-election where he called some of his MPs useless; exactly not a term one expects from a humble mouth to refer to colleagues. Even if Sata is elderly among his MPs, calling them useless shows arrogant disregard for others. The PF lost the Katuba seat to the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND)—at least Zambians decided not to add one more useless MP to parliament.

Shortly Sata was off to Congo DR on a SADC region meeting, but hardly had he touched down back home, Sata was jetting straight to Zimbabwe to attend a wedding for Robert Mugabe’s daughter. What was the snub about his own son’s wedding?

Today the civil society feels extremely pissed off by President Sata’s ‘animal driven constitution’ remark. “Those demanding for a people driven constitution must first show me an animal driven constitutions” is all the response Sata made when he was shaken out of his cocoon, feeling the mounting pressure over the constitution.

Sata did not stand at the Freedom Statue to grace the International Women’s Day on March 8 and yet the most significant Youth Day that followed four days later, he absconded.

On Labour Day he only issued an instruction, a quick one, to Labour minister to make employers to pay more money to their workers and refused anyone from delivering speeches and off he went back to State House where he is holed up most of the time, choosing to speak to the nation through his Face-book Page.

Just on Youth Day as Sata remained holed up in seclusion, police arrested 42 youths from Action Aid who joined the Youth Day march-past clad in T-shirts demanding for a clear road map on the constitution from government.

Despite this police action reflecting badly on the issues of how the government tolerates peaceful and silent symbols of freedom of expression, the really ‘humble’ Sata has remained mute.  

In Eastern province, from 16^th to 17^th March, police fought running battles with local people they tried to stop from attending meetings that were to be addressed by opposition UPND leader, Hakainde Hichilema. 

NN