*Unbridled and Unrealistic Presidential Ambitions – An Achilles Hill for Political Cohesion Amongst the Opposition*
By Muhabi Lungu
Opposition Political Parties Must be Serious and Mature for the sake of our Country. If we do not take steps towards this much needed maturity, the opposition will be doomed to irrelevance. Today I want to share my private thoughts about a trend in our country, regarding individuals who have either made a little name, for themselves, or have managed to acquire a little more extra money or have been praised by about 50 people or so (usually after speaking well on Radio or Television), who all of a sudden, develop self imposed delusions of grandeur and decide that they should become the President of Zambia. PLEASE TAKE NOTE, that it’s really, REALLY hard for someone to become President of Zambia.
Here are some useful statistics for your consideration. Of the 46 candidates who have contested for Presidential Elections, in the last 35 years since the 1991 Elections, 29 of them have failed to even obtain a meagre 1% of the National Vote. Among these are notable names such as Ng’andu Magande with 0.23%, Charles Milupi with 0.96% and Dan Pule at 0.20%; those that try to contest a second or third time around usually fare worse in the subsequent attempts. If you take Nevers Mumba as an example, in 2001 when he first stood, he managed a 2.24%, in 2015, he dropped to 0.88% and by the time he stood on his third attempt in 2021, he had further dropped to 0.10%. In most mature counties, any candidate who scores bellow 5% of the national vote is never taken seriously by the public. The Newspapers, the Radio and TV stations would not give you the time of day to appear on theirs platforms.
Above this really, REALLY low mark, only 6 candidates have managed to obtain between 1 – 8% of the people’s choice. These have included Humphrey Mulemba with 6.6%, Benjamin Mwila with 4.92% and General Miyanda with 8%. This means that 35 candidates out of the 46 candidates have failed to get even 10% of the National Vote. Even very prominent and relatively wealthy ones, such as those I have just mentioned above. Only 3 candidates have managed to get between 10 – 20% of the National Vote. These being Dean Mung’omba with 12.75 % in 1996, Tyilenji Kaunda with 10.12% in 2001, and General Christon Tembo with 13.17% in 2001. Hence 38 candidates out of the 46 have failed to cross above 15% of the Votes in the last 35 years; including prominent people who were once powerful and influential figures who were Vice Presidents, Ministers of Defence and Award winning Ministers of Finance. No matter, This represents 83% of all candidates failing to breach a 15 percent low water mark.
Please, pause and take just a minute and think about this. This is a very bad indictment on either the quality of our candidates, in general, and/or the organizational capacity of our Political Parties to reach a significant portion of the population; particularly of political parties viewed, by the Public, as personal to holder and established with the sole purpose of one person’s private agenda. Our public is quite observant and very perceptive. Clearly and If we are sane enough, we need to have a serious rethink on the way we chose our Presidential Candidates; Obviously, our voters think very little of them.
Let me flip it, in order to get context and have it looked at from another angle. Out of the 46 candidates that have stood as Presidential candidates since 1991, only eight (8) of them have managed to get above 20% of the National Vote. To make it more relevant to the current 50 Plus 1 vote threshold, for candidate to become President, only 3 out of 46 candidates have managed to get above this most necessary and absolutely important and extremely difficult threshold. Only FTJ Chiluba in 1991 with 75.77% (can’t count 1996 because he barred his main opponent), Edgar C Lungu in 2016 (with the power of incumbency) with 50.35% and Hakainde Hichilema with 59.02 % in 2021.
All the other Presidential victors, LM, RB, MS and ECL (in 2015) won with an average of about 42% of the Vote. The current President, HH, out of the six times he stood, on FIVE attempts failed to obtain the threshold of 50%. In fact, on three of those occasions, he obtained under 26% of the National Vote. People should not even dare to compare themselves to Michael Sata as this man was a Governor and Minister of State under the UNIP Administration and Minister of Local Government, Minister of Health, Minister without Portfolio and National Secretary of the MMD; yet it took him four attempts for him to make it to the Presidency; of course, too many forced errors by an aging MMD, which had over stayed 20 years in power, also helped him out. So, please remember that out of 46 candidates that have stood, a whopping 43 candidates have failed to get the required threshold; for most of them, by far, very far away.
So, what am I saying? I am saying that winning the Presidential elections, for the great majority of those who put themselves forward for voter consideration is extremely difficult; an almost impossible task really. An Englishman would even say “a pipe dream endeavor.” I am afraid that if I gave an interpretation of this saying in one of our local languages, it would sound rather rude. So, maybe you can try and give it a translation yourself.
WHY, there can be as many as sixteen candidates in a presidential contest, in our country, is totally beyond my understanding. However, I do know that there are a lot of Sooth Sayers, SANGOMAS and/or ‘Men of God” out there that are in the habit of convincing us politicians that we have been ordained or chosen and that they have seen it in dreams or that God spoke to them on our behalf; and we politicians are suckers of this type of “divine message.” Having been a recipient of some of these sooth sayers myself, over the years, I believe MOST of these massages to be quite fake. Although most of us politicians really eat these things up. Most of us politicians are unable to see through the deception (unable to see through these false prophets and Sangomas) of these diviners because of our “Very Healthy Egos.”…or Should I say Irritatingly Unhealthy EGOs; Puffed up with blinding arrogance.
Let me also point out, that since 1991, 13 of the 46 candidates have stood more than once, some six times (HH), others five times (GGM) some Four times (MS)(TJ), some three times (NM and EN) etc, the total number of actual attempts at the Presidency since multi-party politics is 73. Out of this, only 3 times have candidates obtained more than 50 plus one. Under the current threshold (which should never be changed), this would represent a success rate of 4% or putting it another way, a failure rate of 96%. No sane person would risk even a careless bet, even of small champ change, with such odds. These are very bad odds for dealing your cards.
Let me end by quoting Pontius Pilate as he admonished Judah Ben Hur to take caution and be reasonable with his decisions: “There are far too many small men of envyion ambition that think they can disrupt the government of Rome;” they can’t….. In my personal humble view, a 50+1 threshold is very obtainable by the opposition, in order to defeat “Caesor”, if common sense and self interest is submerged for the greater national interest. I am quite certain, in fact 80% sure, that HH and his UPND can be soundly defeated in 2026, if were to put forward ONE unified candidate, backed by a solid and honest policy framework.
I think that this unrealistic plethora of blind ambition by us politicians, distract us from undergoing proper processes of selecting credible presidential candidates that are worthy of consideration by our voters. We have made the Presidency a cheap joke and this takes away from our political system further maturing. Surely, at this level, we should be having at most, maybe one or two credible candidates, at best for people’s serious consideration.
I will await rebuttals to my arguments and then I will respond. I think that we truly need to have a healthy national debate on this matter. Thanking you all for taking your time to read my provocative private thoughts.
MUHABI LUNGU
