Veteran opposition leader wins presidential contest
LUSAKA, Zambia — Veteran opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema has won Zambia’s presidency with more than 50% of the vote.
Hichilema was declared president-elect Monday after getting more than 2.8 million votes to President Edgar Lungu’s 1.8 million, achieving one of the biggest electoral wins in the southern African country’s history.
Lungu, 64, accepted defeat and said he would work for a “peaceful transfer of power.”
Hichilema, 59, welcomed Lungu’s concession but described the outgoing government as a “brutal regime.” Hichilema was arrested multiple times and spent time in jail on treason charges under Lungu’s government, but said he would not seek retribution.
Preaching unity in Zambia, a country of 18 million people with several political and ethnic divisions, Hichilema urged an end to political violence in which several people died in the run-up to the elections.
“It is indeed a new day. Change is here,” said Hichilema. “Let’s put the past behind us.”
Hichilema, a businessman contesting the presidency for the sixth time, promised democratic reforms, investorfriendly economic policies, better debt management as well as “zero tolerance” for corruption and patronage that allegedly characterized Lungu’s administration.
Hichilema garnered more than half of the nearly 5 million votes cast to win the presidency outright, without having to go to a runoff election. About 80% of the country’s registered voters cast ballots.
Hichilema will become Zambia’s seventh president since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1991 by founding president, the late Kenneth Kaunda, who had ruled the country as a one-party state for more than two decades.
Hichilema narrowly lost two previous elections to Lungu in 2015 and 2016.