Governance Activist Pamela Chisanga says the government should create a platform where citizens will agree on a roadmap in the constitutional amendment process.
Ms Chisanga said that for a long time now, citizens have allowed a group of people or a party in government to determine the roadmap to have a constitution amended.
“This time around what we should be saying is that any government in power should be able to faciliate and upport the process for citizens to be able to set the agenda, a roadmap and be able to develop the constitution ourselves, and we shouldn’t be waiting for government to give us a roadmap instead what we should be doing is to push the government to create an environment by setting up a system and process where we come together as Zambians and identify a platform through which we will be able to formulate a roadmap that will lead to the development of a constitution,” she said
Ms Chisanga explained that if the constitution amendment process is left upto the period of elections, it will not be a people driven constitution, but it will be an election posturing constitution because people will be responding to pressure with the view that there are elections coming up and people would want things chaged in the constitution, so, the only things that will be changed are those that will either leave people a little bit happy that the constitution has changed and if will probably make it possible for those in power to stay in power.
Meanwhile, Ms Chisanga mentioned that it’s only the United Party for National Development – UPND who can tell the nation as to whether MacDonald Chipenzi is a member of their party or not.
“The only people that know the truth if Mr Chipenzi is a UPND member is Mr Chipenzi himself and the UPND members, becuase if all remember very well Mr Chipenzi was nt allowed to participate in the Elections under the UPND ticket because he was cited as not being a member of their party,” she said
“I am one of those who believes Mr Chipenzi would actually surprise many interms of his performance at the Electoral Commission of Zambia – ECZ as I don’t believe he will have a bias, from a personal point of view, I have interacted with Mr Chipenzi on various platforms and with different people from different political parties and he is a very different person from the person that we see in the media, that I truly believe, there are things that I cannot devouch here but I do believe in what he has portrayed, and am not going to judge him based on things that I haven’t seen nor heard from him, am judgimg him based on what I have seen of him and heard from him, that’s the basis am making the judgement,” she said
She stated that being aligned to a political party should not be a problem nor a limiting factor interms of people serving in various position, however, they should be a distinction at individual level where one distinguish that the place where one is and the role being played is not for the political party one supports because supporting a party doesn’t mean that you are a card carrying member nor a post holding member of a political party just because one believes in the ideologies of a particular political party.
“As things stand in this country, we all have our alignment in terms of who we support, and at personal level one should be able to say they will support the good things that they should be supporting under this government which is being run by the political party that one supports, and one should be able to comment even when the political party they support make a mistake,” Ms Chisanga said
The biggest problem we have in Zambia at the moment is that everybody in partisan and that’s why we have failed to write a Constitution that makes sense. May be let’s just revert to the 1991 Mvunga Constitution as it makes more sense than those after it. Those in Govt will sponsor themselves and their surrogate NGOs to push their narrow agenda, the opposition will also do the same. It’s a circus. After spending so much money and time we’ll again realize that we need to amend the same document. We don’t know what we want. For others it’s an exercise to make allowances and put food on their tables. Let’s just continue to misgovern ourselves after all the same Constitution isn’t even followed. So what’s the use?
My good attractive friend Pamela. It is been a long time. I will have to arrange dinner with her soon. ?
Every time we change government it’s constitutional road map, amend the constitution , etc. Let’s just change the laws that need to be amended through parliament who are spread on payroll. Why waste more money on the same process every 5 or so years.