By W. E. Kamirichiki, PhD.
In August—barely four months away, Zambians must try correcting a very gargantuan mistake we committed and tried to correct in the last presidential election cycle. We must vote out PF and President Lungu in order to keep and preserve this republic.
It is a complex affair trying to figure out what makes some voting Zambians—most, economically desperate—think that the Patriotic Front party should continue governing this country, or what would make them turn to someone like President Edgar Chagwa Lungu to keep ruining it.
There is no doubt that Zambia faces social and economic problems—and yes, some challenges pre-date President Lungu. To turn a corner from what is likely going to be the ugliest election in modern Zambian history, we must make Zambia fashionable for politics again by voting out the most criminal party ever to hold our presidency .
Mr. Edgar Chagwa Lungu is the worst political and ruling-party candidate for president in Zambian history. This is not a close call. By virtually any measure, he is unfit to lead anything. He failed to lead and set a law firm as a going concern. He drew the professional ire of the law association of Zambia (LAZ) for theft of a client’s money. As a result, LAZ suspended his law licence in 2010. How then, did we not see this character would be carried over into the presidency? It was. Look where we are as a republic.
It is worth going back and reading the transcripts of his press conferences just to stitch his lucidness when he is answering questions off the cuff. It is breath-robbing how incapable he is of forming a single articulable vision for our country. Most of us have had low expectations for him. We have found nothing worth to analyse in his comportment over nearly six and half years of his chequered presidency. There is nothing seismic about his flawed governance record except his failure and that of his PF party to enhance the presidency. The “humble” man of Chawama meanders in thought and purpose and so he lets his press handler do all the press relations bit because he toddles, and occasionally whines about the opposition when he fails in his work. He is uninformed and unprepared to tackle the issues of governance. He has failed to grow into it because he failed to nurture method, reflection and foresightedness expected of a lawyer would-be president.
He fumbles, constantly, about everything. And he either has failed to control the criminality of his supporters or that he stokes their anger, fear and even violence among them. He nurtures their very worst instincts by ignoring their worst criminal instincts. His mis (un) informed followers brag he is “humble”. That is nonsense. He has lashed out and conspired by concocting bogus claims against the opposition, most frequently the leader of the UPND, HH, and anyone his cadres think is insulting President Lungu.
These nearly six years have helped us understand how deep a disaster Mr. Edgar Lungu’s presidency has been. There is no limit to the potential for unending horror he can wrought upon our country. Think of how much he has been a failed president – how he has not released a report of inquiry about our gassed brothers and sisters, how much unsustainable debt he has saddled upon our grandchildren and their great grandchildren, and how much he has flexed the judiciary to his power-hungry insatiable ends. And how reckless he has been in firing professional career civil servants doing their jobs under the very burden of ill-managed political pressures. And how he has stuffed PF-morons as staff into critical institutional infrastructure of our republic.
By voting out PF and President Edgar Chagwa Lungu, we cease to imagine scandals. We are spared the stench of corruption, and the national embarrassment of a clueless man that would keep brewing if we extended his rule of ruin. Consider how leaf-thin his policy knowledge is and how impulsively he reacts to his political rivals and righteous constructive criticism of PF. Imagine the potential exponential growth of political violence and cadre criminality if we buy into that hollow PF manifesto without a moral foundation.
President Edgar Lungu should not be re-elected to succeed himself as president of Zambia because he should not have been allowed to ascend to that office in the first place. He was our monstrous and regrettable mistake we must now correct for Zambia’s posterity.
As patriotic citizen of this country, we should not let President Lungu yet again be a train driver of a criminal wagon of PF party carders. To refresh our country, our ousting of the PF party for another political party would in effect be a referendum against every word of PF lies, no matter how outlandish and easily disproven. There are some people, even at this defining period, who are torn about whether they should support him or protract his presidency. Maybe they are a small yet important segment of our ill and mis-informed brothers and sisters who have been fed lies about the opposition, especially HH, about what he would do in the Zambian presidency.
Maybe they are a regrettable crowd who hear bogus and unpatriotic stories about “how a Tonga should not rule our country”. The last nearly six and half years have proven that HH is not what these misinformed sect thinks and has, to most rational Zambians, erased those unfounded fears. Foresighted Zambians now see that everyone in the opposition from UPND or HH have genuine resentment and fears about PF judgment, and the future of our republic. The PF mindless political terrorists are on the loose, but the August vote is the chance to stop Zambians from murdering Zambians. Presently, it is dangerous to be a civil servant and have opposition-leaning ideology. But we surely should and will shame the loosing PF party by celebrating PF-leaning civil servants who love their country by serving in the incoming opposition government.
But now is the moment for every last Zambian to decide what it truly means to be a citizen of this great Southern Africa Eagle republic. You can be reluctant about UPND or Hakainde Hichilema. You do not even have to vote for him (though I will, without doubt or hesitation even if “he is Tonga” according to the tribalist narrative of unpatriotic small and primitive political minds ). I will vote for him, because even at his worst, UPND or HH or any serious opposition president is still better than President Edgar Lungu at his supporter’s overrated best). In fact, most of PF’s rivals are teachable, can be fast learners and have a solid character to be potentially great leaders or ruling parties.
What you cannot do—and I wish I could add, what you must not do—is to vote for PF and Edgar Lungu and pretend that this is just another election, and he or the PF has a possibility of re-tracking back to good governance. It is your minimum duty as a citizen not to support a clueless, and unqualified leader of a mostly purposeless and corrupt party, who has in his “humble” nature done everything in his cluelessness to allow ugly transient vulture instincts to ruin Zambia. There is nothing in the horizon that can assuage our faith about an individual who received more than six test years to try the presidency, and mostly failed.
No matter how left out or left behind you assume you could be under the UPND Presidency, voting for President Edgar Lungu is nothing short of a colossal moral failure. It is a vicious act against our posterity and our great grandchildren, and for many others who would suffer miserably under his continuing presidency.
It is an act of violence and betrayal against Zambia itself, whose re-known has always been about an island of political tranquillity and warm people progressing from social and economic hardships and brotherhood , sometimes frustratingly slowly, but forward.
The promise of those hollow PF slogans by its fist-clenched carders who are more of criminals than civilized citizen is to dig our republic deeper into an economic debt doldrum, and possibly, even U-turn us back into the opposite direction of colonial ownership. The clenched fist they sell is snake oil of empty rhetoric. It is a constant reminder to the rest of us how they have plundered our country, hidden ill-gotten wealth, and mastered violence with a symbolic tight fist no one will unclench. It is a lie. We must bury PF this August to reclaim our country for our children, and somehow, even help save PF from PF.
Election mistakes from 2016 are proof we took and tried our chance. It turned out to be a big triple mistake: PF under Lungu, the presidency under PF and Zambia under PF. Yes, everything has mostly gone under. We have found the whole PF architecture to be spectacularly wanting. Now, if we are to progress, we must correct this monstrous triple mistake by ushering in a PF-less and a Lungu-free Zambian government. My people, the voting month and hour cometh!
