By Sean Tembo – PeP President

1. There is this narrative which UPND President Mr Hakainde Hichilema and his followers have been advancing; that every other opposition political must agree with them and work in concert with them, failure to which such a political party is a surrogate of the ruling Patriotic Front political party. I want to categorically state that we do not agree with such a narrative as it constitutes political blackmail by seeking to create a defacto alliance in favour of the UPND.

Mr Hichilema further postulates that all opposition political parties must unite in order to remove a ruling party and that it is irresponsible and unpatriotic for us in the Patriots for Economic Progress (PeP) to seek our own identity by standing on our own. But the question that l wish to pose to Mr Hichilema is; did he, together with his UPND unite with PF in 2011 to kick out the MMD Government of the day? Or did Mr Hichilema and his UPND advance their own agenda in 2011 in the same way that PeP is seeking to advance its own agenda in 2021?

2. As Patriots for Economic Progress, we are not averse to political alliances. In fact, we strongly believe in the need for political alliances as a vehicle for growth of our party as well as for the ultimate benefit of the Zambian people. However, any alliance must be mutually beneficial to all parties. An alliance should not just benefit one political. Each party should make some sacrifices, which constitutes an investment into the alliance, in order to make an alliance work. When we joined the Opposition Alliance with 13 other political parties about 2 years ago, those were our expectations.

At that time, we were willing to make certain critical sacrifices such as forfeiting to stand as a presidential candidate in 2021 so as to rally behind Mr Hichilema’s candidature, and also work hard to push the Opposition Alliance agenda in the public domain as well as help mobilize financial resources for the Opposition Alliance project. I was both the Chairman of the Media Affairs Committee as well as the Chairman of the Finance Committee for the Opposition Alliance and l worked tirelessly in both roles. As Chairman of the Finance Committee and within a period of a week, l was instrumental in organizing the Opposition Alliance end of year Fundraising Dinner at Intercontinental Hotel in December 2018, at which we raised more than K1 million for the Alliance. As Chairman of the Media Affairs Committee, l was instrumental in galavanting from one Media house to another to advance the Opposition Alliance, all at the expense of the PeP agenda. Anyone who understands politics will tell you that Media and Finance are the backbone of any successful political movement.

And l handled both of these critical roles with impeccable diligence and competence. But after investing all this effort and sacrifices, Mr Hichilema was not willing to allocate some constituencies and wards for PeP to solely contest in in 2021, as part of the Opposition Alliance package. He point blankly told us that since UPND is more popular than PeP, the best he can offer is for our candidates to contest on the UPND ticket! To us, this amounted to dissolving our party and joining the UPND, which was contrary to our understanding and expectation from the Opposition Alliance. So l told Mr Hichilema that l will be withdrawing my party from his Alliance, and so we left.

3. However, it is evident that Mr Hichilema expected myself and PeP to continue advancing the UPND agenda even though PeP was no longer in an alliance with his party. Our view is that in the absence of a political alliance, there is no compulsion by any party to advance another party’s interests. The concept that the opposition must, by default, unite to kick out a ruling party is inherently flawed and is not shared by even Mr Hakainde Hichilema himself, because he clearly did not unite with PF in 2011 to kick out the then MMD Government.

To the contrary, Mr Hichilema walked away from the PF-UPND pact. Sata and his PF solely beat MMD and kicked them out of office. But since today it benefits Mr Hichilema, he wants to advance a narrative that PeP has a duty and responsibility to help him kick out PF and that if we do not do that, then we are surrogates of PF. And yet, he is not willing to sacrifice a single constituency or ward in return for our support.

4. My view is that Mr Hichilema is a politically weak guy and he knows it deep down his heart that he does not posses the mental strength and prowess necessary to kick out a shrewd and brutal ruling party like PF. He knows that he needs the support of people like myself. But Mr Hichilema is not just a weak guy, he is also a selfish guy. He is not willing to give away even a single constituency or ward in return for the support of people like myself. He wants it all to himself. He wants us to rally behind him for free and escort him to State House. Even politically naive people like embattled Chishimba Kambwili who think that Mr Hichilema will make him his running mate will soon bite the dust.

Now, these two attributes of being politically weak and yet selfish puts Mr Hichilema in a catch 22 situation. For his political career to succeed and for him to enter State House, Mr Hichilema will need the support and assistance of strong political players. However, those strong political players will be unlikely to offer their support pro bono. They will want some form of power sharing of sorts, which Mr Hichilema, by virtue of his inherent selfishness will be unable to grant. Just like he was unwilling to allow any alliance member to contest even a single seat in 2021, and wanted everyone to be under the umbrella of his faltering UPND party.

5. But being politically weak and selfish and not the only handicap for Mr Hichilema. He also has an inflated sense of being smart. He falsely believes that he can outwit his political allies. But his attempts to outwit his political allies are so shallow that they usually border on crookedness. For example, in 2016, Mr Hichilema allegedly entered into an alliance with three other political parties. The leaders of these three political parties were allegedly requested not to file as presidential candidates and in return, Mr Hichilema and his UPND would support the candidature of their MPs in selected constituencies.

For sure, these three political leaders kept their end of the bargain and did not file as presidential candidates. They in fact are said to have gone on the presidential campaign trail with Mr Hichilema. However, when time came for Mr Hichilema to keep his end of the bargain, he decided to allow his party to file candidates in all constituencies including those he had allegedly promised to reserve for his allies. His then allies told me that Mr Hichilema’s excuse was that he had been overruled by his party, the UPND and that there was nothing he could do about it. In my view, such alleged conduct on the part of Mr Hichilema does not amount to outsmarting his political allies, but amounts to being crooked.

6. And today, despite being politically weak and yet selfish and crooked, Mr Hichilema feels that he is entitled to Sean Tembo’s political support. How dare you sir! Just like Sata and his then PF fought and beat MMD, you sir need to fight and beat PF by yourself. We at PeP shall also seek to fight and beat PF by ourselves. It is each man for himself and God for us all. In fact, you sir and your UPND have never supported us in any way, shape or form in our fight against the PF.

We have challenged the PF and it’s Government in four cases in court (all of which we won by the way) and you sir never allocated us any of your lawyers among your large army of lawyers, and neither did you contribute a single Ngwee for our legal fees. We undertook 13 successful protests against the $42 million fire tender scandal and you sir never sent a single one of your UPND members to come and give us solidarity. While we were being attacked by Paul Moonga and his thugs along Cairo Road, you sir were lying on your couch at your home busy tweeting. And today, you feel that you are entitled to our support as you seek to fight the Electoral Commission of Zambia on very flimsy matters? Well, you sir can go to hell.

By Nalucha Nganga Ziba, Country Director, ActionAid Zambia

2021 NATIONAL BUDGET REFLECTIONS

ActionAid Zambia has observed that the 2021 is not realistic and lacks bold measures to
stimulate economic recovery and build resilience to safeguard livelihoods. To begin with,
some of the macroeconomic objectives are not realistic, for instance, there is a target
pertaining to achieving domestic revenue collections of not less than 18.0 percent of GDP,
however the budget has no comprehensive revenue compensating measures. In this
regard, many stakeholders have called for bold tax revenue measures such as cancellation of unbalanced tax agreements that facilitate tax avoidance and lead to loss of
revenue. In the same vein, it seems there is proposal to remove discount on some fees as
a way of raising revenues. For instance, removing discounts on fees paid for online
company registration and filling of returns. However, with the current economic hardships
which has affected companies’ little revenues will be raised.

ActionAid Reflects on the 2021 budget as follows:

Revenue Estimates and Financing

The government envisions to spend 7 percent more than what was projected to be spent
in 2020. This is in the backdrop of a reduction in both tax and non-tax revenue at 1 percent and 31 percent respectively. It is also worth noting that the 2021 national budget tax revenue projection is unrealistic in the wake of COVID-19 without rigorous progressive
fiscal reform to enhance domestic revenue mobilization. We do not see how the
government is likely to maintain the tax revenue in 2021 less 1 percent of what was
projected in the 2020 national budget when we have already projected a reduction in the
same.

ActionAid welcomes the commitment to undertake a thorough review of existing tax
incentives to make them more effective in reinvigorating economic activity. We, however,
wish to remind the government that this should not only be about reinvigorating economic
activity but also about assuring tax revenues to finance public service provision. All
detrimental incentives and tax treaties such as the recently cancelled Mauritius tax treaty
must be suspended.

On the other hand, once again as observed in our submission, the Minister of Finance observed that despite the negative growth in most sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic, sectors like information and communications technology were expected to register positive growth. The 2021 national budget could have introduced a variable Profit Taxes or an excess profit taxes or solidarity tax for such sectors.

Debt Sustainability

The government has already committed to finance more than 40 percent of the 2021 national budget by borrowing. We observe that this is likely to worsen without a realistic revenue projection and fiscal reforms to enhance domestic revenue mobilization. We risk sliding into a debt trap and likely to see a situation where more than 70 percent of the 2021 national budget will be financed through borrowing. We wish to remind the government that, apart from the recent advent of COVID-19 we are in this economic malaise largely due to huge and unsustainable public debt levels. It is, therefore, unfortunate that we do not only want to continue on the same trajectory, but we also want to increase our commitment to financing our national budget by borrowing in the 2021 national budget. Prioritizing fiscal fitness should have not only been pronounced but it should have been demonstrated in 2021 national budget.

Social Sectors

As we indicated in our budget expectations, with our current public debt induced fiscal
challenge, the 2021 national budget was supposed to prioritize expenditure on key and
strategic sectors while demonstrating sustainable spending and/or financing of the same.
Financing our national budget through borrowing is not sustainable and will never be a
sustainable solution. Covid-19 did not only expose the weakness in both the health and
education systems.

The Health sector budget share remains below the 15 percent Abuja declaration
commitment and it has decreased from 8.84 percent in the 2020 national budget to 8.07
percent in the 2021 national budget. The Health Sector budget share has continued to
decrease since 2018. This is disappointing in the wake of COVID-19 battle, which seems
far from over. Likewise, the education sector budget share has not only continued to
remain below the recommended 20 percent but has also been decreasing since 2014. In
the 2021 national budget the sector’s budget share has decreased to 11.5 percent from
12.38 percent in 2020. The development is shocking and questionable especially that
defense, public order management and roads have continued to receive significant share
of the national budget. Therefore, ActionAid wishes to implore parliament to solicit for
upward adjustment of budget allocation towards the health and education sectors.

Additionally, while we note that there is an increase in the Agriculture sector budget share from 3.7 percent in 2020 to 6 percent in 2021. We, however, note that government
continues to prioritize FISP and FRA which have lower productive returns and are less of
agricultural activities. More resources of the Agriculture budget go towards FISP at the
expense of investing in key areas such as extension and research services which have
shown to have return rates. These areas should be prioritized.

Climate Change

Likewise, though we have seen an increase in Environmental Protection budget share
from 0.58 percent in 2020 to 0.8 percent in 2021, however an allocation of 0.8 percent
does not reflect the urgent need to address Climate Change holistically. Climate Change
poses challenges to Zambia’s ongoing efforts to combat poverty, reduce food insecurity
and sustainably manage natural resources. We have witnessed an increase in the effects
of Climate Change in the last two decades that have adversely impacted food and water
security, energy generation and livelihoods. Agriculture, which is key in economic
diversification, is highly sensitive to changes in climate, as demonstrated in the past few
years. Extreme climate events also pose a risk to other sectors such as health and
infrastructure and to biodiversity conservation. Parliament, should therefore, reconsider the budgetary allocation towards environmental protection which houses climate change
mitigation measures.

All in all, we are of the considered view that the 2021 national budget is short on
progressive fiscal reform to enhance domestic revenue mobilization, hence, risks plugging
the country in more debt. The budget did not also demonstrate the prioritization of both
education and health sectors which have been adversely exposed by the COVID-19
pandemic as well as the agriculture sector which is key in much talked about economic
recovery post the COVID-19 pandemic.