PF HAS ‘SAFE’ CANDIDATE
…Lungu is eligible for presidency
ITis strange that some individuals and organisations have resurrected the debate on whether President Edgar Lungu is eligible to contest the 2021 presidential election.
Even after the Constitutional Court has declared that it will not go back to discussion its judgement on President Lungu’s eligibility because it is final, it is unproductive for the nation to waste precious time arguing over the matter.
Those who have carefully read the judgement and the Article 106 of the republican Constitution know the truth. And the truth is that President Lungu is doing his first term in office and will be vying for his second and last term as President of Zambia.
In 2018 a consortium of political parties petitioned the ConCourt to state whether President Lungu was eligible to stand as a presidential candidate in next year’s general elections.
In December 2018, the court delivered its judgement after hearing from the parties in which it interpreted the article that talks about presidential candidates and tenure of office. It explained that a term of office under the current
Constitution as amended in 2016 is three to five years.
A person who serves less than three years as president of Zambia cannot therefore be said to have served a term of office.
Why is President Lungu ble?
The applicants (Dan Pule and others) wanted to know specifically if the period President Lungu served from January 25, 2015 to September 13, 2016 constituted a full (five years) term? The second question was whether he specifically and as an individual was eligible to stand as a candidate for presidential elections in 2021?
Before answering the questions, the court decided to correct and or rather reframe the questions by removing the name of Edgar Chagwa Lungu out of the questions saying that the issue or the questions should not be individualised or target President Lungu but that the questions should be generalised.
Meaning that the case was not about President Lungu’s eligibility in 2021 but about an interpretation of a presidential term which straddled two constitutional regimes, that is, 1996 and 2016 constitutions.
Note that this case was not about President Lungu as an individual. After explaining what eligithis case was all about, here are the answers to the two questions raised by Dan Pule and others:
1. That the period served by President Lungu was not, or cannot be a full term and, please note that it’s of no use at this stage to try to understand reasons or the court’s rationale on how it arrived at this conclusion.
2. That it was not useful or necessary for the court to answer the second question... (because it had become otiose or empty, hollow, idle, nugatory, vain and therefore served no purpose,).
Simply put, and this is now my own spin on the matter, President Lungu is eligible to stand in 2021 according to the answer given to the first question by the Constitutional Court.
It was not a full term and, if it was not a full term, it simply means that he can stand, period.
It doesn’t matter whether the reasoning by the court was flawed or not.
The train has already left the platform, the court has said it and it is final! On the second question becoming otiose (not necessary), the court is saying so because it cannot be drawn to discuss the question of whether or not ECL as an individual is eligible because, according to the judges, the case and the questions were not about an individual and should not have been about him as an individual but about the interpretation of the law in general.
So, the court refused to answer the question on the eligibility of President Lungu. However, and as you can see, the failure or refusal by the court to answer that question does not change the fact that his first holding of office (January 2015-September 2016) was not a term. To me that was and remains an indirect answer.
Of course, at the filing of his papers, and given the demise of Bill number 10, some people would want to personally challenge President Lungu’s eligibility to stand as president.
The courts this time around will be forced to address the matter directly concerning the President as an individual.
I guess those not happy with the current ruling in the ‘Dan Pule and Others’ case will be hoping, or technically having a second bite at the cherry. But their case will be fatally weak. That’s my educated guess.