By-elections are nothing but a huge fraud by political fraudsters – M’membe

By-elections are nothing but a huge fraud by political fraudsters – M’membe


By Thomas Ngala (The Mast)



IT’S self-deception for President Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND to celebrate and fool themselves that they have been winning by-elections, says Socialist Party leader Fred M’membe.

He alleges that the UPND has been purchasing and stealing elections.

“They have been dishing out huge amounts of money, mealie-meal, maize, fertilisers, and so on and so forth. This is spiced with violence, intimidation, and threats. Poor voters are threatened with removal from the social cash transfer lists if they don’t vote for them. Financially desperate voters are threatened with removal from CDF loans or grants lists if they don’t vote for them. They collect their voters’ cards and NRCs and assign UPND cadres to assist them vote,” he charged. “Mr Hichilema and the UPND are completely annihilating our electoral process. The credibility of our elections is gone. These by-elections are nothing but a huge fraud by political fraudsters. We participate in these fraudulent by-elections not necessarily to win them; they give us an opportunity to interact, communicate, and have discourse with our people. But what happens when elections are fraudulent and discredited in this way?”

He said the UPND seem to think and behave as if the only democratic procedure for people choosing their leaders were those fraudulent electoral processes, “so often prostituted to falsify the will and the interests of the people and so many times used to put into office the ineptest and shrewdest, rather than the most competent and the most honest”.

“As if after so many fraudulent elections, as if after so much false and treacherous politicking, as if after so much corruption the people could be made to believe that the only democratic procedure for a people to choose their leaders were these fraudulent electoral procedures. And as if any other procedure were not democratic – procedures through which a people choose their leaders not with a pencil but with the sacrifices of fellow compatriots,” he said. “When the electoral process is a fraud, people will think outside the box to express their will. They become more revolutionary in their thinking and approaches.”

Dr M’membe said realities do not arise in the world through someone’s whim.

He added that real revolutions do not arise by the will of one person or one group.

“Revolutions are realities that obey other realities. Revolutions are remedies – bitter remedies, yes. But at times revolution is the only remedy that can be applied to evils even more bitter,” wrote Dr M’membe on his Facebook wall.