THE FUTURE OF ZAMBIA
TODAYour country must deal with the economic and social difficulties confronting all other nations. And every man and woman, boy and girl, must roll up their sleeves and put their shoulders to the wheel to move the country forward.
This long essay is non-prophetic because no visions or supernatural experiences were involved in its writing. But it is forward-looking, aspirational, and discusses what we must do now and in the long run to secure the economic, social, and political future of our country.
THE FUTURE OF OUR DEMOCRACY
Nature of Manchurian
candidates, campaign finance, and State and institutional capture
Any sovereign country is defined by its land and law. Without land there is no country. If there is land but no law, chaos results and the land is broken up into chiefdoms and ganglands where both land and law are re- established in some form or fashion, as Somalia once was after the fall of President Siad Barre in 1991.
Zambia is no exception. We are who we are because of both the land we occupy and the law that governs the peoples of the republic.
She or he who controls land and law can effectively control the whole country.
If a hundred foreigners came into Zambia, were allowed to run for parliament and won, they would be in the majority, and theoretically, could change the laws, empower themselves, and wield that excessive power over the whole country.
Eventually they would control the presidency, the cabinet, and the entire political system, which would ultimately, control the economic system.
In practice, however, these individual or corporations, do not need to run for parliament. Instead, they seek to attain the same control over the political and
economic systems of a country by identifying, packaging, and financing Manchurian candidates to run for strategic elective offices.
Once in offices, these Manchurian candidates, compromised and directed, become tools of state and institutional capture.
This re-enforces the importance of campaign finance laws to safeguard the future of Zambia’s democracy.
In addition to Manchurian candidates, the state and institutions can be captured by unscrupulous governments, corporations, and individuals who want access to the protected prime assets of the state by controlling who makes the decisions about law and land through bribery, seduction, intimidation, and outright murder.
In city councils, government agencies, and corporations, they install, through bribery, fear, seduction, sex, and manipulation, men and women who would draft, place on city council and corporate agendas, regulations and statutes benefitting them.
Actions like these were amplified in South Africa in which arguments and accusations were made that the South African State had been captured by certain individuals (Mark Swilling, May 2017: Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is being Stolen).
In addition, the capture of national agendas and prime national assets was the subject of the best-selling
book New Confessions of an Economic Hitman (John Perkins, 2016).
President Trojilo Panama was assassinated in (1981) for refusing to re-negotiate the Panama Canal Treaty with the United States
(Perkins, 2016) and also for his interest in awarding a major canal construction project to the Japanese instead of the traditional North American civil engineering companies.
President Jaime Roldos of
Ecuador
Similarly, President Jaime Roldos of Ecuador died in a suspicious
plane explosion in 1981 allegedly for passing laws that would force major oil corporations operating in Ecuador to “implement plans that would help Ecuador’s people” (p.164).
In 2009 President Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown in a coup
allegedly sponsored by powerful American corporations that have massive agricultural production in Honduras (Perkins, 2016).
These are some examples of corporate hegemonic power exercised to control sovereign nations and send messages of fear to other countries, essentially putting them on notice that what happened here could happen there if those
countries resisted the interest of the corporations or governments.
But assassinations of national and corporate presidents are not in the playbook of corporatocracy anymore because dead presidents are worth less than corrupted and compromised presidents whom these corporations and governments can control to their benefit.
The failed coup in Seychelles is an example. In 1986, the near- death experience of Seychellois President France-Albert Rene when assassins came for him forced him, to take a $3 million bribe from a country in Southern Africa on behalf of a major player (Perkins, 2016). Compromised, the president was left to rule for almost two decades thereafter.
In addition to compromising national leadership through corruption, bribery, extortion, seduction, intimidation, and assassinations, ransomware technologies will become tools of institutional capture by governments and corporations because these tools are more insidious and difficult to fight off if a nation or corporation does not have the software and hardware technologies to defend themselves from these attacks, and in some case to launch attacks against those attacking them.
The future of Zambia’s democracy is dependent on ensuring we select morally competent individuals to propose, develop, enact, and enforce our laws in a manner that is centred on the interest of Zambians present and future.
These laws must protect and defend national assets and institutions from unscrupulous governments, corporations, and individuals, and must be strong in not allowing financing of elections by corporations and foreign individuals and governments.
It is expected that both foreign and domestic efforts at state capture or capture of specific agencies and industries (through financing of individuals for elective presidential or parliamentary office) will be amplified in the coming years as competition for raw materials and markets becomes more and more complex.
The future of Zambia’s democracy is dependent on ensuring we select morally competent individuals to propose, develop, enact, and enforce our laws in a manner that is centred on the interest of Zambians present and future.
END OF PART ONE