INDEPENDENT MPS IN 2021 GENERAL ELECTION AND SUPPORT OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
By ISAAC MWANZA
There are only three conditions required to be met for one to file in the nomination as an Independent tommorow.
1. You must meet the qualification in Article 70 clause 1 of the Constitution of Zambia.
2. You must not be a member of any political party at the time of filing your nomination. Even of you resigned just some minutes before filing your nomination, you would have met this qualification.
3. You should not have been a member of a political party at least two months before the General Election. So by 14th June, 2021, everyone who is filing for independent should not have been a member of a political party. Everyone who would have met the 1st and 2nd Condition would met this qualification unless they decided to rejoin the political party.
3. Can an Independent candidate at Parliamentary or Local Government level pledge allegiance to any one presidential candidate? There is no law, both in the Constitution or the Electoral laws to prevent an independent candidate from supporting any presidential candidate. This means that an Independent candidate may even campaign alongside any of the presidential candidate or in favour of a presidential candidate.
The only provision of the law, contained in Regulation 15, Sub Regulation (f) of the Electoral Code of Conduct is that no persons is allowed to plagiarise the symbols, colours or acronyms of candidates or other political parties.
To plagiarise means to take someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own. What is being prevented from being used as your work are the symbols, colours or acronyms.
For example, if I stood as an Independent MP, I support President Lungu or UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema, there is nothing in the law that says when I cannot put the portrait or faces of President Edgar Chagwa Lungu or Hakainde Hichilema as my my preferred presidential candidate. That is no plagiarism.
In fact, independent candidates who support Presidential candidate are more likely to increase the numbers of a presidential candidate they support while competing themselves against their fellow opponents.
Our system of governance is that a person who wins the presidential race is the one that forms government in Zambia, regardless of the numbers of MPs or Councillors they may have. So if any of our political parties are interested to form government, they must see independents as a forum they can tap into to increase the chances for their presidential candidates.