PRESIDENT HICHILEMA IS ENJOYING GOOD HEALTH, IT’S JUST ALARMISTS WHO ARE THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY PEDDLING LIES-AMOS CHANDA
Disinformation a major threat national security, cohesion
…at a click of a button last week, alarmists set off the country into frenzied anxieties about the President’s health last; awakening the nation to the ominous realities disinformation poses to national cohesion…”
By Amos Chanda
LAST week some very determined alarmists set off a rumour that President Hakainde Hichilema was so gravely ill that he was incapacitated and had been evacuated to his native Namwala district to receive traditional therapy, bringing to the fore the inherent dangers disinformation poses to national security and social cohesion.
So bad in taste was the rumor, that government communications systems seemed to have been caught off guard, and in panic responses, set off their own inadvertent contributions to the already bad situation.
This allegation of illness of the president just went to cement some now established practices in some circles that politics is a platform where falsehood can be used as a currency of exchange.
Disinformation and misinformation is taking centre-stage in our politics and have sank deeply in our body-politic that some political operators are prepared to go to the extent of manufacturing an illness for their opponents.
In between these morbid expectations from some circles, there is the stark dilemma of those tasked to handle presidential and government communications in general.
When on Friday, 24 January 2025, up until mid morning Monday, 27 January 2025, when alarmists dominated acres of social media space, alleging the President was seriously incapacitated, the nation was held hostage by both the depravity on the supply side of the false information, and a somewhat a system failure on the demand side of the expected legitimate sources of information.
It is never an easy call for presidential communication handlers, because it often comes down to being damned when you do, and damned when you don’t.
But in the often chaotic, non-stop, 24-hour news cycles of the dark web, the imperatives of prompt positioning of the status of the President is clearly inevitable.
It is not just the emotional wreckage that these false narratives inflict on the victims, but in the case of the President of the country, the fallout will go far and beyond the narrow embellishments of the purveyors of the false information.
The impact on national security, financial markets, and social cohesion may just throw the country into troubled waters.
Whilst the demand to know the health of the President is a legitimate expectation in a free and democratic society, it was quite an overreach for anyone to demand an explanation for the whereabouts of the head of state for just one short one weekend!
In total, the President was unseen in public only on Saturday, January 25 and Sunday, January 26. On Monday 27 January, he did not just appear in public, but he also left for duty to Tanzania.
What exhibition did the alarmists expect of him on those two non-working days?
Even assuming he was indisposed, the manner of public demand on his condition ought to have taken a more dignified approach, not the gleeful and morbid inclinations witnessed from some quarters.
This country has lived through the pain and anguish of losing two sitting presidents and the cost in emotion and resources was so massive that no one must wish that upon the nation again.
A dignified response, without directly succumbing to the alarmists, seemed to have been given by the government through a ministry of Foreign Affairs announcement on Saturday, 25 January that the President would travel to to Tanzania on Monday.
But this did not seem to assuage the self-induced anxieties of those who held on to a morbid view the that Commander-In-Chief was actually incapacitated and even wildly suggested he had been evacuated for traditional medicine therapy in Namwala.
That the Minister of Home Affairs and National Security, Jack Mwiimbu had to intervene to assure the nation the President was in good health, implicitly conveyed the precarious implications of the falsehoods on national security calculations.
The minister responsible for national security, and not for information, was, whilst assuring the nation about the condition of the President, also communicating the underlying latent disruptions to the country’s national security architecture as a result of those unrelenting acts of misinformation and disinformation.
So, beyond the short-term gratifications of the “likes” and basking in the glory of cyber anonymity, media and political players must understand that reckless acts of disinformation (which apparently have been cited by the visiting UN investigator Irene Khan), can rapture not just our long-held cohesive national fabric, but also also threaten national security
This can happen due to the irreparable damage to financial markets and social upheavals that can erupt as a result of the unpreparedness of the authorities to handle such disruptions engineered via fast moving mass communication channels such as social media.
Such acts may create a vicious cycle of arrests and counter-accusations of repression which in themselves will set the country on the global spotlight of human rights watchdogs as a country of interest to them.
When the country is viewed that way, loans and foreign investments become a lot more difficult to attract and therefore impacts on national economic growth, which in itself leads to social tensions and possible break-down of law and order.
For the authorities, it becomes a daunting task of precarious balancing acts of guaranteeing individuals civil liberties on the one hand, and ensuring national security and stability on the other.
Ultimately, it will boil down to the dialectics of a constant battle between freedom and order.
If our society will be strong-armed from above, emphasizing order over freedom, a likely implosion from within may occur.
If on the other hand, authorities stressed freedom without order, our society a social explosion that may undermine national cohesion may come about.
So it is imperative that responsible communication is done in a manner that benefits because, conversely, irresponsible actions will surely undermine the quality of our democracy.
Ends…