Intoxicated on borrowed and deceitfully acquired power, is the UPND deliberately courting national violence?
By Azwell Banda,
Everyone in the UPND is on it: they all are, like the incurable fools that they are, celebrating their “Constitutional Court victory” over Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
It takes a particularly, uniquely, perverted and cruel group of insanely drunk people on deceitfully acquired power to celebrate a clearly fake victory such as Hakainde Hichilema and his entire UPND sycophantic political choir are doing!
Like little children who happily think they have gotten away without being caught after stealing poisoned sweets, Hakainde Hichilema and his entire UPND choir are falling over each other, trying to outperform each other, about telling us and the whole world how they “cleverly” outwitted Edgar Chagwa Lungu in court and “defeated” him. Everyone, not even the UPND Attorney General wants to be left out of the celebratory dance: Edgar Chagwa Lungu must now withdraw from politics and take up the role of “statesman” they all croon.
Typical of Hakainde Hichilema and his pathological craving for self-praise, he has, in so many ways, from his own mouth, since the judgment, actually revealed and announced to the whole world that he personally participated in gathering evidence, scouring the world for justifications, and formulating the fake judgment against Edgar Chagwa Lungu. Nothing best shutters the liberal fake assumption and myth of the “separation of powers” than how Hichilema and the entire UPND – in and out of government – have behaved over the Edgar Chagwa Lungu eligibility case and its hollow, sham Constitutional Court judgment.
And then there are all those political morons, some of them quite intelligent, educated and well meaning, who are “advising” Chagwa Lungu to move on, abandon his current “deceitful and evil” political activities, just accept the court judgment, anoint a successor in his Patriotic Front (PF) party and maybe play a supportive role to any opposition presidential candidate he may personally support. Apparently the UPND government and Hichilema himself, should Lungu withdraw from active politics this time, they will then stop persecuting and prosecuting Edgar Chagwa Lungu’s family and political party.
One needs to be a political moron of a very special type to believe Hichilema and his UPND choir would leave Lungu alone, if now, after the fake eligibility judgment, Lungu “retired” from “active politics”. Hakainde Hichilema and the entire UPND have not graduated from opposition politics, cannot do so, precisely because they were never meant to be in government in the first place; they cheated their way into government, and are staying in government through their lying ways which now include their insanely annoying celebrations over their fake, cooked up Constitutional Court judgment over the eligibility case of Edgar Chagwa Lungu.
A deeply troubling question is the matter of the sanity and conduct of any group of men and women in government who rejoice and publicly celebrate a fake victory such as how Hakainde and his UPND are celebrating their “victory” on the eligibility case of Edgar Chagwa Lungu. All capitalist politics, like capitalism itself, are rotten and based on lies, trickery, crookery, hypocrisy and all manner of deception. Most people know and understand this, especially the politicians themselves. Still, most politicians retain a modicum of decency, respect for themselves, and some basic sanity, by not consciously lying even to themselves!
Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND however, cook up lies, consciously lie to themselves and go on to believe in their own lies, and then celebrate these lies, publicly, as the truth. There is no better set of clinical symptoms of chronic insanity than this kind of behaviour. A liar who is still sane does not believe and celebrate the lies they consciously make about themselves. To the contrary, a sane liar actually hates that he or she has to lie, especially to themselves! Such a sane liar cannot celebrate a lie they concoct about themselves. Such a sane liar is still possessed of the ability to distinguish between the truth and a lie: this is also one test for sanity. Hakainde Hichilema and his UPND miserably fail this sanity test.
Take the incredibly insulting claim to millions of Zambians suffering from chronic hunger and extreme poverty induced by the UPND government that the UPND government is rated first in Africa at delivering for its country’s people. This extremely insensitive and insane claim is related to the claim by the UPND government that they have delivered more than 80 per cent of their campaign promises to Zambians barely three years in government. It is also related to Hakainde Hichilema’s schizophrenic claim that other countries want him to assist them attend to their national problems as he has done for Zambia. These insane claims are all related to the claim that Hichilema and the UPND government are the “first government” to do so many good things “for the first time” for Zambia, in such a short time.
Meanwhile, any objective examination of the really lived economic and social conditions of the majority of Zambians reveals starkly opposite evidence to these insane claims, made by Hichilema and his UPND sycophants. In our entire 60-year history, no political party in government, not even Chiluba’s Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) government, has ever unleashed such a concoction of insanely selfish, and punishing economic and social policies in Zambia, when in the opposition they promised the exact opposite!
When in the opposition, Hakainde Hichilema and his sadistic UPND party did not promise Zambians ever rising and extremely high prices of water, food, diesel, paraffin, petrol, electricity, transport, rent, property rates, road tolls and so on. Nor did they promise Zambians ever rising inflation and exchange rates. They boasted they would resolve our hunger, unemployment and poverty crises, almost overnight. They claimed they had the solution to deal with our debt and reduce, not increase, our debt. They boasted they would end load shedding and end our dependence on hydroelectricity. We now simultaneously have punishing electricity load shedding and extremely expensive electricity! All these things impact very negatively, massively, on the standard of living for all Zambians and on the cost of doing business, in Zambia. Combined, all these things and more have unleashed mass poverty throughout Zambia such as we have never experienced.
The Chief Justice has recently bemoaned the extremely high and ever rising gender-based violence in Zambia. We have explosive and rising unemployment. The Bank of Zambia governor has bemoaned the corruption and poor services in our public health system. The Minister of Health has proclaimed that there is corruption everywhere in government, not just in the Ministry of Health. There are ever rising numbers of beggars and orphans everywhere, throughout the country, now cruelly called “junkies”. Many such negative and morbid symptoms of a failed government and collapsing country greets one at every corner throughout Zambia. Hunger and the stench of mass poverty in Zambia today are overwhelming. In opposition, Hakainde and the UPND promised to reduce both. And yet the UPND government claims they have demonstrated to the whole world they are the best African government at delivering to their people. This is not the usual lying and deception that happens in all capitalist countries. This is unique: it is a symptom of a very rotten and sick economy, society, country and its government. It is pure undiluted insanity.
It is the shocking mass silence and passivity at such public display of insanity in government which renders our entire society and country insane. No mass protests at such lunacy in government, throughout the country. Only a deafening silence. And the usual opposition parties’ claim that Zambians are patiently waiting for 2026 to remove the UPND from government, and install them, in government. This, apparently, is how our “democracy” works: elect liars, thieves and the corrupt into government, and wait for them to irreparably damage the country, then elect them out of government by electing a new set of liars, thieves and the corrupt, into government. Meanwhile, mass hunger, unemployment, poverty and inequalities continue to worsen!
It is now clear that in opposition for upward of 23 years, the UPND and Hakainde Hichilema grew to have absolute contempt (and possible hatred) for Zambians and how they treat their politicians in government: it is payback time now, and, knowing how passive, pacifist, incapable of defending any values and even our own lives, Hichilema and the UPND have become thoroughly intoxicated with borrowed and deceitfully acquired political power: they are manufacturing lies for us and for themselves, and have gone mad – they actually believe their own lies and deceptions, and celebrate them!
No individual or people are born with genes for non-violence. Any individual, or people, pushed beyond a certain point, may react violently. It is material conditions which either reduce and eliminate violence, or incite and trigger it. A people that enjoys “peace” do so because they have cultivated, grown and nurtured “peace”, among themselves. Those who plant the seeds for violence eventually reap its fruits, its rewards. Are Hichilema and the UPND, extremely arrogant and conceited, in their insanely unbelievable lies and deceptions goading Zambians towards mass political violence? Hakainde Hichilema and the UPND are truly sowing the wind, they shall harvest the storm!
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