By Mubanga Malama
In recent months, police have consistently cited resource constraints as a reason for failing to issue opposition parties with permits to hold public gatherings.
Amidst the unravelling internecine wrangles in the opposition PF, police have suddenly found enough resources to send a heavily armed platoon of officers to barricade the PF head office. The mission? To provide security to the weakest faction claiming control of the PF. In scenes reminiscent of the cold-blooded murders of Lawrence Banda, Vespers Simunzhila and Mapenzi Chibulo, police fired volleys of rubber bullets last week to disperse crowds of PF cadres protesting the brazen theft of their head office.
The difficulty in comprehending the current state of our politics is that this brutality is unfolding right under the watchful eye of President Hakainde Hichilema, a leader who in his campaign swore to protect and uphold the rule of law. Interestingly, the US and Britain who are his strongest backers and countries which in recent years have supported Zambia’s ascent to becoming a beacon of democracy in the SADC region have opted to fold their arms and watch the UPND annihilate the country’s democratic credentials.
It is fact that Hichilema’s main political foes are all drowning in a sea of legal troubles and those that have dared to show him a semblance of a backbone have been politically defanged, posing no threat to his authority. Any discerning Zambian can tell that the political vandalism unfolding in the PF has an endgame, the result of which is to pave the way to removing Edgar Lungu’s immunity. But should the country’s democracy be imperilled just to achieve this agenda?
Sadly, instead of solving the intractable challenges facing the country, a responsibility for which they were elected, Hichilema and the UPND have squandered the goodwill bequeathed to his party by the electorate. As things stand, there is no turning back from this destabilisation agenda because their political fortunes are warning and waning so fast. Its thus not surprising that the return of President Edgar Lungu to active politics which in all turns and purposes should have been a damp squib is now garnering generous coverage. Suddenly a leader that was embarrassingly whistled into retirement is fast gaining public sympathy.
It is rather disappointing that the judiciary is also lock in step with the ruling party in efforts to destabilise the opposition with other state organs bucking this trend. While there is no denying that the Lungu Presidency was brutal in dealing with dissent, Hichilema’s UPND is proving to be more clinical and lethal. The President seems to be winning in his bid to perfecting and moulding an embarrassing record which his predecessor failed to achieve. Indeed, the UPND’s diversionary tactics are paying dividend as the wrangles in the PF take centre stage. Makes you wonder, is this the Bally that we so viciously fought to send to State House?
The tragedy herein is that the UPND’s actions are tainting Zambia’s democracy and the modicum of respect we have left in our political tank is slowly being stolen before our eyes. For the time being, the country’s psyche has shifted from the usual bread and butter issues. This is exactly what the governing party wanted. You can tell, screams of rising costs of mealie meal, fuel and other essential commodities have now taken a back seat with Miles Sample, a cunning but pliant politician with a cheap political price over his head taking centre stage.
The success of the UPND’s stratagem is that nobody is talking about Peter Kapala’s alleged dodgy and corrupt dealings with one Shashant Patel and how the Energy Minister’s recklessness is costing Zambians more money at the pump. Did Solicitor General Marshal Muchende receive a US$500 000 bribe from a named former liquidator so he could unfreeze the said individuals accounts? What is the fate of the frivolous Auditor General’s report which in actual sence should be the main topic of discussion in parliament?
What about the never-ending whispers of the Fertilizer gate scandal that ensnared Morris Jangulo’s Alpha Commodities. Will Jangulo ever be called to account for the Fertilizer gate? The absence of answers from government to these burning questions is precisely how the UPND is stealing your future. To their credit, they seem to have embraced corrupt practices without ample tutelage from the PF. While it took PF seven years to obliterate our coffers, it has taken UPND barely three years to break a number of standing records on corruption. With that in mind, the little that Bally promised to fix once elected to office, is now being broken piece meal.
It is sickening that sections of the media have become complicit to the UPND’s scheme by giving Miles Sample and his faction undeserving coverage. Desperate times do indeed breed strange bedfellows. Have UPND members forgotten how the sly Kanchibiya PF legislator Sunday Chanda, who is now a strong member of the PF demolition squad would insult the current Head of State at will? It was Sunday and the PF Media team that christened Hichilema when he was still in the opposition with the moniker ‘an under 5 tribal deviant’.
It was the PF Media team led by Sunday that kept using every available media platform to lampoon HH as a heartless businessman who benefited from the spoils of privatisation. Today, Sunday and many others are being feted by the UPND. A reminder to the UPND that politicians of Sunday’s ilk have no shame to their conscience. All they care about is their bellies. He ate under MMD, then moved to PF and now he is fervently knocking on the UPND’s door hoping his efforts to destabilise the PF will earn his elder brother McPherson Chanda, a free pass from jail. Ironically, McPherson is the only former high ranking PF associate to have been convicted in the UPND era for crimes committed during the Lungu Presidency.
Anthony Mumba, Andrew Lubusha and many others in Sample’s camp also have dates with the law. They are now throwing in their lot with the destabilisation agenda not because they want to rescue the PF from Lungu’s clutches but because of self-serving interests. But for how long can the UPND government sustain this diversionary agenda? Like the PF, the UPND need no reminder that a hungry and unemployed Zambian youth can be a danger especially if let free to cast his vote.
It is also important to consider that many observers that are voicing concerns at these developments have little sympathy or association with the PF but are merely patriots that have Zambia’s interests at heart. For our democracy to flourish, Zambia needs a strong opposition to provide checks and balances to the UPND’s freewheeling antics. It is not too late for the President and his party to change course and whip his subordinates to order otherwise failure to act will consign Lawrence Banda, Vespers Simunzhila and Mapenzi Chibulo’s deaths to a scrapheap of political irrelevance.
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