Zambia Must Not Sleepwalk Into An Electoral Nightmare

With ten days to go all three parties are conducting the usual campaign trail travels. UPND is targeting the Southern Province, Lusaka and to a degree the Copperbelt. PF are concentrating on Lusaka, Copperbelt and occasionally visit places like Northern Province. It looks like the MMD is the only party conducting a national campaign. As you would expect allegations and counter-allegations are being made.

All candidates are saying only they have the solution to our countries problems and we have to vote for them, and so on. So all in all it is business as normal; in that respect Zambian politics is actually quite healthy.

Where the differences do appear, and quite starkly, is on how they are predicting the outcome. We hear the usual “…hard battle ahead but we are confident we will win” sort of lines from the relevant spokesmen. What is interesting is that PF, and more recently UPND seem resigned to defeat. How else can one explain the allegations of vote-rigging, predicted electoral corruption and impending malfeasance? Similar allegations were made following the last election in 2006, and readers may well remember the violence and rioting by PF cadres. This time around the allegations are being made well before polling day, why?

The answer lies in the question ‘Do PF themselves think they can win?’ The apparent answer is ‘no’. The considered opinion is that PF, knowing it cannot win has looked to recent events in Zimbabwe and Kenya for an electoral solution. PF strategists have concluded they cannot win an outright victory so the only option available is to get into government by stealth. Such strategy and such talk is defeatist and begs the question, “Why is PF in the running at all?”

The answer can be found in Kenya and Zimbabwe. In both cases the winner of the majority vote was robbed by the second place candidate. Both Raila Odinga and Morgan Tsvangerai should be President’s of their respective countries, but they are not. The real victims in all of this are not the politicians themselves but the voters of Kenya and Zimbabwe, not forgetting democracy itself. If our democracy is hijacked in this way then it is us, the Zambian people who will have been robbed.

Our country will enter into uncharted territory; how would a MMD/PF coalition actually work, how long would it be before there is a split and we are once again going to the voting stations? Can you really see HH in government? What position would Guy Scott hold? Would Sata really be prepared to go as No. 2 to Rupiah Banda?

Many of these scenarios are too ludicrous even to contemplate. Already we see that the Zimbabwe ‘coalition’ falling apart – actually it cannot fall apart as it never really got going in the first place. The prospects are not good for that country. The message is this: Zambia must not sleepwalk into an electoral nightmare.

Zambia has a healthy and well respected democratic history. It is to be remembered that the PF allegations of 2006 were proved to be unfounded by both the Zambian Electoral Commission and the International Observers who oversaw the elections. If any political party has fears of impending electoral malpractice it should go directly to the Electoral Commission, SADC Observers and EU Electoral Mission and voice its concerns. To create political mischief and make allegations from the sidelines damages not only themselves but also Zambia as a nation, and that would be wrong.