HOW EVIL AND POISONOUS PF BILL 10 IS TO OUR DEMOCRACY?
Its with a deep sense of patriotic regret that we continue to see successive governments tempering with the Constitution in a desperate effort to perpetuate their hold on power.The Constitution should have been commanding public reverence and sanctity.
In the recent past we have seen legislative commandeering by the Executive to create clauses that are targeting opposition threats or supporting perpetuity of the incumbent.We are all still fresh from the hangover of the third term and even recent maneuvers to bar Michael Sata on the degree clause. Why should the legislature be lowered to such treasonous levels just for the sake of one individual?
Instead of addressing retrogressive laws that continue to defraud our economy such our mineral regimes, tactical tax evasion and the disproportionate distribution of development, the entire Parliament is now engulfed in a partisan Constitutional amendment process that gobbles monstrous expense in the desperate effort to impose it on the Zambian People.
Who Bewitched Zambia to operate in this manner? Herein, is where we needed these self proclaimed in the person of Prophets, Papas, Men of God to deploy their exorcism to save Zambia. But, sad that the church itself has rebels standing in complicity with the PF.
Bill 10 is part of Executive Order 2021, a covert operation aimed at delivering a 2021 Victory for PF and Edgar Chagwa Lungu. Beyond the apparent institutional capture and breakdown in the rule of law, the PF now wants to crown their mortal failure through the enactment of Bill 10 using crooked means. Technically, Edgar Lungu is legally out of the race in 2021.
The desperate drive to pass Bill 10 is aimed at creating legal leverage to circumvent the Constitutional interpretations by invoking executive prowess to change the law.
Additionally, Bill 10 will avert the need of a rerun by co option with surrogate parties like those “bamushanina bwali”. Furthermore, Bill 10 will allow the legal elimination of political opponents through a superiority clause that would purge intra party compliance to democratic tenets such as conventions.
BILL 10 has no precedence in both procedural and executive influence. Never before have we seen the massive sponsorship of surrogate youth movements, make shift church groups and abuse of Persons with Disabilities in the quest to garner public sympathy.
Billboards have been mounted to condition public psyche. Why and What for? We all know for a fact that key stakeholder engagement was discarded and replaced by the PF doctored NDF. In all previous National level consultative engagement, the church mother bodies have been recognized as Strategic stakeholder given their following and authoritative stand in society. As soon as it became apparent that they would not rubber stamp Edgar Chagwa Lungu and PF criminal agenda through BILL 10, they were unceremoniously replaced.
Christians for Lungu took over. Lungu has openly discredited the church mother bodies as not having the exclusive monopoly of ecclesiastical authority. His ministers like Given Lubinda and Nkandu Luo openly humiliated their Catholic faith through running commentaries on what they described as meddling in Political affairs.
How does such a diabolical document become a solely political matter when it proposes to create a one party state in essence? The same document proposes to create an environment of unrestrained debt contraction by giving exclusive rights to the President against the background of a debt mountain even under parliamentary oversight.
The same Bill 10 proposes to unilaterally manipulate parliamentary constituency in order to give undue leverage to the PF. A closer and patriotic review of the entire BILL 10 will clearly show that the Patriotic Front government and Edgar Lungu are a heartless and treasonous lot who should be jailed for perjury. They swore allegiance to the Zambian Constitution that they have now u-turned to destroy.
Their determination to pass this Bill 10 is scaringly suicidal. They are ready to die or kill just to see this Bill 10 passed. Should Zambians sitback under docility even when their very life is being wrenched? We need to rise up against this betrayal by the people who should have been building the nation they are now destroying. Posterity will not forgive us for not standing for the right. BILL 10 IS THE PF POISON IN THE PUDDING.Let’s counter it with the same spirit that defeated one party state and the third term bid.
SIKAILE C SIKAILE
GOOD GOVERNANCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST FOR ZAMBIA AND AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL