SATA/POST STRATEGY OF GOING NEGATIVE BACKFIRES!

Voter turnout low in Lusaka and Cooperbelt, Rural Provinces better than expected!

Early returns that our reaching us are suggesting that the Sata/Post campaign strategy of going negative with personal attacks on MMD candidate Rupiah Banda has backfired against them. Conducting a negative campaign, such as the recent Sata campaign, carry a huge risk. Negative campaigns tend to suppress voter turnout. This is especially true in the case in more rural and affluent electorate. In 2006, Sata’s support was clearly in those two provinces.

Sata has already begun crying crocodile on AlJazzera, and for that matter anyone else that will listen to him. He is suggesting that somehow this election has been manipulated at his expense. Nothing could be further from the truth! What is becoming infinitely clear is that Sata and his mates over at the Post have been a bunch of numpties and have sabotaged their own campaign! Sata, you have no one else to blame but yourself!

BREAKING NEWS: Why Is the Post Being So Vicious?

BREAKING NEWS:

Over the last month a shift has taken place at the Zambian Post, it coincided with Zambian officials announcing the need for a by-election to select a President to stand for the remainder of the term left open by the recent death of HE Levy Mwanawasa. The Post, a long time supporter of the late President has switched sides. They chose not to endorse the Acting President, Rupiah Banda; rather they threw their support behind the challenger Michael Sata.

This shift seems even stranger when you consider the fact that for many years the Post has vehemently and consistently attacked Michael Sata for being a charlatan, a crook and a thief. The reason for this sudden reversal was the fact that Post has financial problems. Zambian Airways is owned by The Post (30%), along with a subsidiary of Seaboard (National Milling Corporation) (12.5%) and JCN Holdings (57.5%).

Their relations are even closer than they seem, as inquiries discovered that the chairman of National Milling is also the chairman of Zambian Airways and furthermore sits on the board of the Post. Zambian Airways are in serious financial trouble - this is no secret. They are in arrears to the Airport Corporation at a rate of about $225,000 US a month. The extent of their financial difficulty was demonstrated recently when Zambian Airways had to announce they needed to cut back their flights, suspending their Lusaka to Mfuwe service.

The Post initially supported the MMD, but expected the Finance Minister, Peter Ng’andu Magande to win the nomination. Magande had been sympathetic to a bailout plan for the doomed airline. However, when Rupiah Banda secured the MMD nomination, the Post’s position did a complete about turn and they began their unprecedented and mainly unfounded attacks. This was because Rupiah Banda has supported the position proposed by Transport Minister Dora Siliya, proposing a business based solution rather than a government bailout.

It is rumored that a deal has been struck with the opposition candidate and the Zambian Airways Group. In return for this deal to bail them out after the election, the Post has jettisoned all sense of fair journalist practice and started an unmitigated smear campaign against the Acting President Rupiah Banda. Banda has filed for and has been granted an injunction against the Post, but this has had little effect in curbing the newspaper from continuing their unethical campaign to defame and discredit his character.

An unknown in this ongoing and incestuous saga, is the position of the American conglomerate Seaboard. Are they complicit in their shareholders, Zambian Airways and the Post’s attempts to manipulate the outcome in the upcoming presidential election? Until now, Seaboard has been conspicuously silent on the issue. Their Corporate Social Responsibility should, one would think, implore them to make their position on this issue clear.

If a situation like this arose in the current presidential election campaign in the United States, would Seaboard sit by and be as mute on the subject as they are here, in Zambia?

Canadian Journalist Tries To Hide Sata Bribe Scandal

Kusila Kwa Cobra reported recently that Michael Sata was at Yatsani Radio station handing out K50,000 notes to people. One of their intern staff, Ms Eliasha Stokes reported these illegal actions on a website called Journalists for Human Rights.

Ms Stokes now wants to have her work removed, Kusila Kwa Cobra will consider her request. Her blog has subsquently been removed from the Journalists for Human Rights website; maybe they spotted the hypocrisy of her story? When you see what she has written then you will see why. Ms Stokes letter to us can be found under the story called 'Sata Exposed for Bribing Journalists’. Kusila Kwa Cobra’s reply to Ms Stokes is here:

Ms Stokes,

Thank you for contacting me via the Kusila Kwa Cobra website. You did not leave your email details so this is the only way I can communicate with you. This is of course a very public forum and its contents may be picked up by other journalists, newspapers, radios etc, so I choose my words carefully.

I do not understand your concerns about false ‘investigations’, naming names, “putting false world [sic] into my mouth” as you put it and your right with regard to copyright. You withdrew your article after it was challenged which suggests that you were aware of your mistake. I however totally stand by my work. Let me explain.

First you raise the issue of our investigation proving “absolutely false”, far from it. If I am wrong then I urge you to address the following:

• Deny that you were working at Yatsani Radio when the ‘politician’ attended the premises to “buy air time for an interview”;

• Deny that you took Kw50,000 from the politician;

• Deny that four other people also took money (we accept that they were not journalist, indeed we understand that they were not employees of Yatsani radio but we do have their names);

• Deny that the politician in question was Mr Michael Sata, Presidential Candidate for the PF Party;

As you will see my ‘investigation’ is well informed and I am more than happy to furnish any authorities you choose with the evidence I have uncovered. The authorities I am thinking of are the Electoral Commission of Zambia, the Zambian Police and the Immigration Department. Should you think of any other do let me know. Of course if I am wrong then you will have no problems defending my charges. If I am proved wrong then you have my word that I will retract my story and apologise to you on the Kusila Kwa Cobra website. It would be the professional thing to do.

Your second point is that I put false words in your mouth. Again far from it. I attribute no names to you. I named Yatsani Radio and I named Michael Sata. I could name other names but I will hold back for now, unless of course you want me to.

Thirdly, that your article is not political. Your article is about political corruption, namely bribery. You yourself use the expressions, “a very prominent politician”, “the election is coming”, “The politician reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of K50,000 notes (about twenty dollars). He hands a note to each of the journalists”, “I know it is unethical for a journalist to take money, especially from a politician.”, ““That’s our future President”, remarks one of my co-workers.”, and finally, “Future President or future dictator?”. Ms Stokes you are a journalist, you know the power of words and you know the meaning they can convey; it is you who made the story political, not me.

What this really boils down to is your own hurt journalistic ego. It was you who took money off a politician during an election campaign. It was you who was silly enough to write about your stupidity and then publish it on the web. You are either very naive or you deliberately placed your story so as to attract attention to yourself as a journalist who has witnessed electoral bribery at first hand.

What is most depressing is that after conducting yourself in such an unprofessional manner you choose to hide behind imperialist USA laws. I may well have to remove your text from my website but this story will not die. Kusila Kwa Cobra is monitored in the USA, South Africa, Norway, UK to name but a few, and of course it now has a keen following in Zambia. As a journalist who has taken money off a politician I would have thought you would want to keep a low profile, not raise your head above the parapet.

This issue has nothing to do with copyright. This is a story about political corruption and your involvement in it. You are an accomplice to Mr Sata’s actions, your refusal to go to the Electoral Commission or the police damns you. In Zambia we have a problem with corruption and we expect learned people like yourself to help us in our fight. You are a Canadian; would your actions be acceptable in your own country? The answer is ‘no’, so why do you come to our country and get involved in such illegal actions.

You are nothing more than a cheap journalist who takes money from bad politicians; maybe you should go get a job at the Post.

The Kusila Kwa Cobra Team.