PF LOSSES IN WARD ELECTIONS IS A GOOD THING
By Isaac Mwanza
The PF has performed badly in the last ward elections and its is actually good that it has done so. One of the reasons PF lost the 2021 elections was because the PF leaders failed to listen and selfishness entrenched itself in the minds of decision-makers.
Let’s be honest here.
1. Selfishness and self-service continues to guide those who want to lead the PF. Among all those presidential candidates who are vying to take over the top leadership, how many went out to try and help campaign for its candidates in these wards?
Only one or two presidential candidates were into the campaigns. The rest of them have simply been concerned about winning the support of the grassroots structures to win the Presidency.
As someone had also observed, it is very important to dedicate and show commitment in building, strengthening and investing in your party if you want to lead and have it survive the storm, otherwise you may end up leading a shell. Of what use will the PF be to anyone if it has no numbers?
At the rate PF is moving it will become another UNIP and MMD – a shell – with leaders in name only just for purposes of making alliances or sipping coffee when Government call meetings for party presidents.
2. PF strategists knew perfectly well the new strategy by the ruling party to use resignations and rescinding of resignations as a political tool of eliminating candidates but they didn’t learn anything from the Kwacha and Kabushi saga.
The PF should know that the politicised justice system will not help them to address the injustice that emerges from an electoral system that is being shielded from becoming accountable to the Judiciary.
Rather than wait on the Judiciary the PF should have learnt to play the same game in these elections. The country has reached a point where only when this chaos in the electoral process reign, and is mutually perpetrated by all competing parties, will the time be for the law to be clarified.
3. The Electoral Commission of Zambia will not help the PF to participate in elections. The same case of Nyatanda Ward. ECZ has developed a new unwritten law on allowing candidates who rescind a resignation, which although not provided in the Constitution, to help the ruling party win political seats on a silver platter. ECZ knows there is little the opposition can do about this new formalised used to kill our democracy.
4. The Nyatanda Ward saga cannot be challenged in a Local Government Election Tribunal based on fact that a candidate who resigned participated in an election in violation of the Constitution. The Elections Tribunal, just like the High Court, has got no jurisdiction to hear such an allegation on the conduct of elections that breach of the Constitution.
In any case, the PF must know that the courts will not help them to get justice if they become complacency themselves. It is not the duty of the courts to do so. Those who seek justice must pursue it. They will be hurdles along the way but it must be done.