ABOUT POLITICS OF BLACKMAIL: A CASE OF FAILURE TO COMPETE
By Sean Tembo – PeP President
1. There is no question that for the past 10 years or so, our politics here in Zambia has been dominated by only two political parties being the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) led by President Lungu and the main opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) led by Mr Hakainde Hichilema. In fact, in the last general elections of 2016, these two parties accounted for about 98% of the total votes at presidential level. Now, if you asked me, l do not think that’s good for democracy to have the entire political terrain hijacked by only two political parties with the rest of us falling on the sides as nonentities. But this is a situation that arose by default due to MMD’s rapid meltdown after they lost power in 2011, thanks to Bashikulu Ba Sata who made sure that the former ruling party was completely dissipated in no time. This left former MMD members with no option but to join either PF or UPND thereby creating a defacto two-party state.
2. Now, between the last general elections and today, several political parties have mushroomed including our own Patriots for Economic Progress (PeP). As to what kind of impact these new parties will have on the political terrain is something that remains to be seen. But one fact is undeniable; if any of the new parties is going to grow into a potent third force, they have to grab members from both the two dominating political parties being PF and UPND. In my considered view, it is difficult if not impossible to substantively grow a new political movement by only grabbing votes from one of the two existing large parties.
3. But how does a new political party grab members from existing political parties? Well, different political party leaders will have different answers to that question. But my answer is that you can only achieve that by out-competing your opponents in terms of having better solutions to national problems and offering yourselves as a better package. Speaking of which, that is exactly what we in the Patriots for Economic Progress have been doing. From our inception on 5th October 2016, we have sought to demonstrate to the Zambian people that we better understand Zambia’s social, economic and political problems and that we have better solutions to these national challenges and that the only way that Zambia can prosper is by ushering us into office so that we can better manage the affairs of the nation. We have been doing this using several different ways including developing and presenting our PeP Alternative National Budgets for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and more recently for 2021. We have also developed and presented the PeP Alternative National Development Plan as well as more recently a PeP Alternative Economic Recovery Plan which outlines how we intend to turnaround the ailing Zambian economy onto a path of sustainability and prosperity from the current doldrums of poverty, squalor and debt-default. All our political activities since the word go have been designed to convince the Zambian people that we are a better political movement than either the PF or the UPND, with the sole purpose of seeking to grab votes from both these two political parties that have dominated Zambian politics for the past 10 years or so.
4. With regard to the UPND, we have been competing with them by challenging their proposed solutions to Zambia’s economic meltdown such as the IMF loan that Mr Hichilema says he intends to get as a first step to kickstarting the economy. We have told Mr Hichilema in no uncertain terms that his proposed economic solution is shallow and unlikely to bring about any positive turnaround to our economy because his reasoning that getting an IMF loan at low interest to pay off existing external debt is deeply flawed as an IMF loan cannot be used to refinance a country’s existing loan portfolio. We have also told Mr Hichilema that one of Zambia’s biggest economic problems at the moment is over-borrowing. And even my 6-year old daughter, Seanice knows that if your problem is over-borrowing, the solution to that problem cannot be additional borrowing as Mr Hakainde Hichilema is proposing to the Zambian people. Apart from his flawed economic solution for Zambia, we have also told the UPND leader that his party is just as incompetent as the ruling PF because UPND-run local authorities are just as dilapidated as PF-run ones, with huge amounts of salary arrears despite their huge revenue generating potential such as rates, billboards, personal levy, licensing fees, parking fees etcetera. Therefore, given that UPND has failed to show any signs of competence in any small way at local authority level, it is unlikely that they would suddenly become competent should they be entrusted with managing the affairs of the nation. That is our argument. We have also told the Zambian people that if a competent, corruption-free Government is what they really want, then UPND is not the solution, PeP and Sean Tembo are.
5. Our expectation has been that the UPND in general and Mr Hakainde Hichilema in particular will jump to the defense of their proposed economic turnaround model. We expected Mr Hichilema to explain to not only ourselves but to the nation at large how he will convince the 123 member nations of the International Monetary Fund to amend the Governing Principles of the IMF so as to allow an IMF loan to a country like Zambia to be used to refinance the country’s commercial debt such as Eurobond. Even if Mr Hichilema by some magic managed to achieve such a feat, the IMF is unlikely to give Zambia anything more than US$3 billion. So how then can a loan disbursement of US$3 billion be used to refinance the existing external debt portfolio which stands at about US$12 billion? Or maybe he would refinance 25% only and continue to service the other 75% of our external debt? But the way he simplistically puts it is in my view solely intended to hoodwink desperate Zambians who really need a positive turnaround to our economy.
6. But instead of defending his simplistic and shallow proposed economic solutions for Zambia, Mr Hichilema and some of his minions in the print media have taken to attacking us. They seem to want to peddle a false narrative that an opposition political party such as PeP should not compete with a fellow opposition such as UPND. What nonsense! We have two dominating political parties who almost equally account for a combined 98% of the total votes in the nation and you are telling us that we should grow our market share by only competing with one of them and not both? Forgive my French, but that’s absolute nonsense. I want to put it on record, once and for all, that as PeP and as Sean Tembo, we will always compete with any and all political parties in the manner and fashion that we see fit. Others call it attacking but l prefer to call it competing. When we say Mr Hichilema’s proposed economic turnaround plan of getting an IMF loan is shallow and simplistic, surely we are not attacking him. We are merely challenging him and his response should be to add some meat to his plan so that perhaps we and other Zambians can understand it better, because in its current form it does not carry water. But what does he do instead? He accuses us of attacking him. If we wanted to attack Mr Hichilema, our focus would not have been on his proposed economic solutions for Zambia, no. Neither would we have been talking about the poor performance of UPND-controlled local authorities. We would not have been challenging Mr Hichilema on any of these substantive matters of national interest. Instead, we would have been asking Mr Hakainde Hichilema why, as Negotiating Chairman he sold the Mosiotunya Hotel in Livingstone to a company in which he was a Director? He might argue that he was not a shareholder, but he was a Director and that amounts to a conflict of interest, and there is no record of him declaring interest, so he broke the law and he betrayed the nation after the nation entrusted him to serve it in that small capacity as Negotiating Chairman during privatization. If l wanted to attack Mr Hichilema, that is what l would have been concentrating on. I would have used my forensic auditing expertise to build a very solid case against him which he would not escape from even with his bus-load of lawyers. But that’s not our focus because we prefer to play civilized politics. That’s the reason why we only focus on issues of the economy and competence to run the affairs of the nation. Because we believe that those are the issue that the Zambian people want us to talk about. Those are the issues that matter to our citizens.
7. But the UPND and its leader should not push their luck too far by seeking to blackmail us into not challenging them by peddling a false narrative that an opposition political party should not challenge a fellow opposition party. Well, the hypocrisy in this narrative is appalling. Didn’t UPND itself refuse to work with the then main opposition PF to kick out the then MMD government in 2011? So chiwamila galu kuluma mbuzi? The only way that political parties would not challenge one another is if they are in an alliance or some form of electoral pact. May it be known by all men and women that the Patriots for Economic Progress is not in an alliance with any political party. Therefore, we can challenge and even attack any political party in the manner and fashion that we see fit, as and when we want. It is unreasonable for the UPND leader to expect not to be challenged by us. It is like he wants to get the benefits of an alliance without being in an alliance. No, that is not the way it works bwana. If you want the juice, you need to squeeze the orange.
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SET 27.03.2021
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