BILL 10: MAKING SENSE OF A LEGISLATIONsuchBELEAGUERED

a person until the court determined whether or not such candidate was eligible to stand or not. This is as blunt as the matter stands!

Some have argued that those opposing the Bill are against an individual, President Edgar Lungu to be specific, standing in the 2021 elections. This reminds me of the manner in which President Kenneth Kaunda was targeted and prevented from standing in the 1996 Zambian elections, by introducing a parentage clause through the Mung’omba Constitutional Review Commission of 1995.

It required every presidential candidate standing for elections in Zambia to have both parents born in Zambia. That is how President Kaunda’s fate was sealed and he did not stand in the 1996 elections; because both his parents had been born in Nyasaland (Malawi).

Had it not been for the introduction of the parentage clause in the 1996 Zambian Constitution, President Kaunda would have stood in the 1996 elections, whose outcome would perhaps have been different from what happened.

But this is only conjecture because Kaunda did not participate in that election. That piece of legislation has since been amended. With hindsight that electoral change has been deemed to have been bad and unfair because the Constitution was amended merely to bar an individual from standing in an election!

Today, we are back on a similar pedestal, refusing to amend the Republican constitution to bar an individual from standing in the 2021 Zambian elections.

One wonders why they did not allow Kaunda to stand in the 1996 elections and just defeat him a second time! Some have argued that this time around the circumstances are different.

The view being that President Edgar Lungu has already served two terms of office, a third one would be illegal! His supporters, both in and outside the PF, argue that it is because he has a formidable campaign message of development and a formidable campaign team, all buttressed by a comparatively better infrastructure development record.

In 2015, after the death of

President Michael Sata in 2014 (MHSRIP), and the PF was embroiled in a succession dispute, some candidates thought the 2015 presidential by-election was theirs for the picking. President Lungu won that election; he won again in 2016, by what some have called a slender majority over and above the 50 percent plus one threshold.

The presidential election results were petitioned in the Con-Court, hence the nerve- wracking 14 days of waiting for the Con-Court to deliver its judgement, and it finally did; President Lungu was sworn in as Head of State. So, the fear of President Lungu standing in the 2021 elections is real.

Some have said it is not fear but the need to uphold the Constitution, and Clause 52 in the current Republican Constitution is the trump card. The question is, is it not too politically suicidal for the opposition to put all their eggs in one basket; to bank only on a legal technicality to “defeat” an opponent?

Let us imagine for a moment that President Lungu opts not to stand in the 2021 elections and the Patriotic Front fields another candidate and that candidate wins the 2021 elections, what recourse to the law will petitioners have; the same raucous 14-day period (already condemned as inadequate) in which to resolve a presidential petition?

People need to rethink their strategies, devise plans that work and avoid putting their eggs in one basket. Franklin D Roosevelt, in his presidential nomination acceptance speech in 1932 said “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.”

Zambian politicians should pledge to the Zambian people a new deal, a new dispensation; they should devise new formulas that solve the equations of socio-economic challenges. For 2021, the same old methods may not win a seat.

Politics have evolved, citizens have moved on and tactics ought to change. The 2021 elections will be won, not by having preferred candidates as your opponents, but by facing anyone and anything because you devised a winning formula, a formula with popular support across the length and breadth of Zambia’s 752, 618 square kilometres, of which 9, 220 km² is abundant fresh water, and not because you successfully pushed out some candidates from the race.

President Kaunda would have stood in the 1996 elections, whose outcome would perhaps have been different from what happened. But this is only conjecture because Kaunda did not participate in that election. That piece of legislation has since been amended.