By MUBANGA LUCHEMBE
SPEAKING when he addressed the nation during the New Year’s Eve, President Hakainde Hichilema urged Zambians to be patient because rebuilding the economy that was broken would take a bit of time.
Furthermore, he explained that there was need for collective efforts to rebuild the country’s economy as his administration was doing everything possible to create jobs and business opportunities for all Zambians.
In his view, this is the change that Zambians desire and the change he is assuring to achieve.
As expected, critics and cynics in Zambia did not mince their words. The president, they said, was trying to scapegoat previous governments which is a crafty tactic to divert attention from the newly-elected UPND regime’s “spectacular failure” in dealing with prevailing socio-economic problems such as the rising cost-of-living, the Covid-19 pandemic and the lack of jobs for the youths.
Given that the UPND regime has a history of a myriad-of-unfulfilled campaign promises – the accusation has deep resonance in the country. So, do UPND’s never-ending blame games expose its deep political ineptitude?
Whichever way you look at it, the UPND government took the reins of power amid high levels of expectations from many Zambians. The expectations were fueled by the disillusionment that many Zambians had about the 10-year PF reign, hence they felt the need for regime change. The unrealistic campaign promises that the UPND made as an erstwhile opposition party were also a factor in its electoral victory.
The way Zambians voted was more a reflection of their rejection of the PF than necessarily their love for the UPND.
In government so far, the UPND has shown deep political ineptitude by focusing on never-ending blame games to scapegoat previous governments. For example, the issue of cadres reining terror in markets and bus stations appears to have not been dealt with.
Despite contradicting presidential pronouncements, party cadres have covertly reemerged in markets and bus stations and resumed extorting money from market traders and bus drivers.
Also, UPND’s decision to remove fuel and electricity subsidies and subsequently increase fuel pump prices and brazenly shift the blame to the ex-ruling party – exposed its deep political ineptitude much to the chagrin of the voting public.
Besides, there are still more areas where the UPND regime could have done better. As observers of the country’s political landscape are acutely aware, the post-election signs had generally been dismal, because there are still some very worrying aspects that the UPND government needs to address in order to give Zambians undisputed-reassurance.
For instance, while there have been several pronouncements made about their commitment to fight corruption, the UPND regime is yet to present its comprehensive strategy for doing that effectively – albeit UPND Spokesperson Cornelius Mweetwa insisted that their administration was determined to fight corruption and recover the stolen public assets and resources.
As he disclosed, in a self-hyping narrative that the citizens would shortly discover how much damage and plunder of resources by the PF had caused to Zambia’s economy.
Not only that, the insufficient representation of women in key appointments had also been a slap in the face of the gender mainstreaming agenda.
Another worrying thing that the UPND appears to have continued from the PF regime is the appointment of party functionaries into key civil service positions, which appears to be at variance with its pre-election campaign promise of professionalizing the civil service.
Furthermore, recent post-election rhetoric in Parliament has been dominated not by advocacy and explanation of competitive policy proposals, but by party partisans blaming and demonizing each other.
The swelling chorus of competitive blaming reached a crescendo with the Speaker of the National Assembly Nelly Mutti’s ruling, that all legislators whose election results were nullified by the High Court, whether or not such a decision has been appealed against in the Constitutional Court, those affected legislators shall forthwith not take part in any parliamentary business. Indeed, the Speaker’s ruling was all about blaming.
It had no other rationale except on a point of order raised by Solwezi East UPND lawmaker Alex Katakwe against Kabushi PF lawmaker Bowman Lusambo on whether the latter was in order to remain in the House following the nullification of his seat by the High Court.
For argument’s sake, suppose our elected policymakers were to call timeout and take a pledge to stop blaming each other for a while. With parliamentary and presidential public approval ratings plummeting and nothing constructive getting done, what have they got to lose?
The pledge would rule out blaming the state of the nation or the country on prior presidents or the other party and pinning failure to reach agreement on the irresponsibility of the other side. Instead of leaning on these reliable crutches, participants in policy debate would have to focus on defining the problem they want to solve, proposing solutions, and explaining with evidence, not self-praising slogans, how their preferred solutions are supposed to work.
Could they do it? Some might stammer, as they are nervous on unfamiliar ground. Constructive policymaking is a whole lot harder than trading insults. That’s the whole point.
Zambia is a very fortunate country, but we face serious challenges at home and abroad that have no past solutions.
The time and energy devoted to blaming each other has kept our elected policymakers from carrying out even their most basic responsibilities, such as funding the activities of government that most of the public is counting on in the near future.
It has totally crowded out serious discussion of genuinely hard problems that demand thoughtful give and take and balancing of competing objectives and interests.
No one party has a monopoly of wisdom in dealing with tough issues like free-education policy, health reforms, rising cost-of-living, local-currency instability, or climate-change. A moratorium on blaming each other would create some space for serious discussion about what to do in the face of these challenges. A simple timeout and a no-blaming pledge could be the first steps to restoring constructive national
