ECZ MEETING WASN’T CONSULTATIVE, THEY WANTED ENDORSEMENT – MAKEBI
PF Pamodzi President Makebi Zulu says the recently held Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) stakeholders meeting was not consultative.
Zulu further says the Commission told stakeholders that it was proposing to increase nomination fees for the August polls due to inflation.
Last Friday, the Commission met with over 50 political parties for a stakeholders’ consultative meeting, where it proposed that the nomination fees for male presidential candidates be set at K100,000.
In an interview, Sunday, Zulu accused the Commission of going to the meeting only to communicate its agenda.
“I think ECZ came to that meeting, not to have a consultative meeting as purported it was going to be, but they had everything already cast in concrete for purposes of informing the participants. So it was not an interactive meeting that was going to yield what people that attended had agreed on. It was merely a meeting where ECZ was telling people what they have decided themselves on all aspects, even to the extent of discussing what is not yet in the law which they are going to implement. They discussed the Bill (Electoral Process Bill) as though it was law itself, as what the requirements were going to be. That was quite unfortunate, and it’s saddening to see how our Electoral Commission of Zambia has degenerated into a not-so-independent institution that serves the interests of Zambians,” he said.
“They seem to have their own interests, they seem to have their own agenda, which they came to communicate. And, of course, they communicated their agenda. It was not a meeting for them to take in what stakeholders had to say, but it was for them to communicate to the stakeholders what they had decided as ECZ. If you ask me, or ask them if at all there’s anything that they took out of there that made them change any particular point of view, there’s absolutely nothing”.
Meanwhile, when told that the Commission was going to reconsider the fees, Zulu said it was all pretence, as the Commission had attributed the proposed increase to rising inflation.
Zulu further said the reason advanced by the Commission suggests that the reduction in inflation announced by government was fake.
“The fact that they said they’re going to look into it, that is them pretending to have heard because when they came in they said because of inflation, the way the economy is doing they decided to adjust it upwards. An admission on that part of ECZ that the economy is not doing so well, they’re simply telling us that this purported reduced inflation by government is fake, they have other expenses that they need to undertake and they are acknowledging that things have become much more expensive and they need to cover up for those. That is the story that they’ve since told us. So if this is it, they’re saying that things are hard, and we agree with them, things are hard. But who should be punished for things being hard? It should be the government that is there, kick them out so that things are better,” said Zulu.
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