Kudos to HH for pulling a fast one
…on hon. Robert Chabinga unsavoury diplomacy
9th May 25
By Amb. Anthony Mukwita
In a surprise move, President HH showed that he can stand up for greater good than self when last week, he threw under the bus, the estranged Mafinga Legislator Robert Chabinga.
You see Mr Chabinga is a strange kettle of fish if you ask moi, he identifies as an opposition MP but actually in reality and publicly he has professed that he supports the ruling party.
Party affiliations are ok in my view but then there’s rules to the whole game whose play-book perhaps Mr Chabinga has not read well.
Anyhow, he’s party affiliations—whether he is PF or UPND—are his prerogative as we leave this matter to be adjudicated upon by the competent courts of laws.
My beef is the fact that Mr Chabinga had the guts to cast aside diplomatic decorum recently and blow the whistle on diplomats based in Zambia, accusing them of ‘undermining the sovereignty’ of Zambia.
As a person that has served this wonderful country at the highest level in diplomacy and studied the craft in Uni, I found the statements by Mr Chabinga, whom I vaguely know, to be not only outlandish, ‘pedestrianish’ but also dangerous.
I cannot find a diplomatic way to frame this.
You cannot just wake up and start accusing diplomats that enjoy immunity in your country of ‘treason’ because that’s what ‘undermining sovereignty’ of a country means to me.
Perhaps Mr Chabinga missed ‘Diplomacy Class 1.0’, if at all they have that in their ‘how to become a legislator’ class before they let them make laws and utter public statements.
There’s a simple thing called the Vienna Convention signed in 1961 in the cultural rich city of Vienna in Austria, effected in 64 which Mr Chabinga can acquaint himself before he continues digging a political grave for himself.
Hence the reason I am commending Don HH for quickly cracking the whip and distancing Zambia from the blatant and wanton ignorance of Mr Chabinga regarding all matters ‘ diplomatic and privileges’ enjoyed by our friends in the ‘mission’ called Lusaka, Zambia.
The Don H showed that when it matters, he can crack the whip even if the person involved is a close business or political bed-fellow that is what leadership requires Mr President.
Throwing Chabinga under the bus does one of two things, it assures the diplomats in Zambia that they are safe and protected under his leadership, yet it also sends a signal to his ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ that ‘I HH shall not hesitate to feed you to the lions if you step out of line.
It puts a check and spotlight on overzealous, or negatively capricious behaviour that has been exhibited by some of his men and women lately.
It’s time for the stick not the carrot, people must stick to their lanes, there must be laws even in the jungle of politics.
I know the public ‘crucifixion’ of Mr. Chabinga was announced by Justice Minister Mulambo Haimbe but it definitely had the final signature of the Don all over it, as it should be with many other things that go awry in our country today.
FROM CHABINGA BACK TO CHINA
I was one of the commentators that relentlessly wrote that the Don H (Hichilema) should have made his first major foreign trip regarding debt restructuring to Beijing and not London and DC or Paris after becoming President in 2021.
My humble thought that time, and still is now, is that if you owe one single bilateral partner a third of your entire foreign debt stock, that time about $15 billion, you meet them first then later London et’ Palais Elyse.
You do not just go around poking the Bear!
I was proven right yet again as the debt wheels only started rolling after the Don H visited Beijing; it don’t take no rocket science to figure this one out and when that worked, I commended la Presidente as I am doing now regarding Chabinga because of my love for diplomacy and order.
The major question now, is, ‘has the love between Mr Chabinga and the Don H faded into ether?’ is the honey-moon finally over before the next polls even bat an eye-lid?
Where to now for Mr Chabinga as he seeks re-election in the crucial polls some are calling make or break next August? Is he gonna get accepted back by his ilk after so much has gone down or this is how the bow breaks?
FROM CHABINGA TO THE POPE
By the time you read these lines, we might have a new Pope or not at the Holy Sea after Pope Francis crossed over to the next world leaving a deep unfilled void in the hearts of 1.4 billion Catholics on earth.
A new Pope will not calm the hearts of the hurting flock but it will at least bring closure to the largest faith on the globe whose population almost equals that of China.
But before the mourning even ends, POTUS Don Trump pulled of one of his many stunts when he feels the media spot light has left him a bit—Trump had his media team viral share an AI image of himself as a ‘pope’ to the chagrin of many Catholics that cannot see the joke up to now.
But you just never know what to expect next from ‘pope Trump’ nowadays. Perhaps it was fake new or just trying to divert attention from ‘blinking first’ after a stand-off on trade with China!
Nobody wins when everyone is losing.
Amb. Anthony Mukwita is an International Relations analyst and published author whose books are available in Bookworld and Grey Matter.
Source: The Daily Nation-‘Mukwita on Point.’