Sat, 11 Mar 2017 13:29:40 +0000
Dear Editor,
The front page story, “Stop this nonsense”, (Daily Nation, March 8, 2017), being narrowly about the MMD-demanded compulsion by the party’s youths for the PF government to step in and tell the UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema to ‘stop the nonsense’ of spreading rumours that there was going to be a new president installed in the country, understandably doesn’t give a complete picture of the UPND’s post-election scenario.
As it stands, this MMD youths’ limitation omits the strategic and political motivations influencing the UPND strategic shift in theemotive aftermath of the 2016 general elections. Even though, I am no keen game player, in the name game called blame game, the aggrieved parties on both sides of the PF-MMD electoral alliance, invested minimal efforts in a need for a vote recount for Southern Province or subjecting a random sample of all UPND suspected under-age first-time voters in Southern Province to an MRI medical scan to actually determine their correct age-groups and cancelling their votes by the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) in the event of age-cheating in the subsequent vote recount as steps to a lasting, acceptable solution to the UPND leader’s denial to his 5-time presidential election loss.
Perhaps, the PF and MMD youths and other supporters should consider obtaining an interdict in the High Court through the Attorney General’s office against UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema and his party to prohibit them from inciting and promoting anarchy in the nation.
Diplomatically, President Edgar Lungu has held most of the cards and has succeeded in getting his incumbency accepted at the UN, the AU and in Britain, China, the European Union and the United States. But no-one has managed to persuade Hakainde Hichilema with his dazzling chutzpah to budge.
It is difficult to overestimate what a disaster the post-election crisis could have been for the country if the UPND had fraudulently won the 2016 polls: instead of unification, the southern part of the country could have become a distinct territory; instead of economic growth, massive redundancies in the mining sector; instead of an end to ethnic exclusion, summary dismissals of ‘non-Bantu Botatwe’ civil servants would have been rampant in government and displacements of other ethnic groups in some districts of Southern Province would have been business-as-usual and not business-un-usual.
Though the post-election dispute has repeatedly shown an ability to endure far longer than anyone dared imagine, it is hard to see how the current situation can last for even a few more months if government could cage Hakainde Hichilema over his rumours of a new Zambian president to be installed.
Ultimately, the primary aim and reason for the UPND leader’s rumour-mongering of imminent installation of a new Head of State is the fear that a politically weak UPND would be more susceptible to a PF-MMD alliance takeover of Southern, North-Western and Western provinces either democratically or through inter-party defections.
Thus the UPND leader would lose strategically by the reduction of his sphere of influence along with the vote-basket in Southern,
North-Western and Western provinces in the prelude to the 2021 polls.
In the end, in Hakainde Hichilema’s nonsense, presidential election victory would always be subject to the saleable political agenda whether fact or fiction
regardless.
ML,
LUSAKA
