By Sara Imutowana Yeta II
Every time the Patriotic Front (PF) led regime has made a national blunder, or there is an exposé of wrongdoing, or its political ploy against Hakainde Hichilema has backfired and at the receiving end of citizens’ condemnation, the PF government will quickly dream up an issue to divert citizens’ attention from the issue at hand.
A few examples include when the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) found that a handful of very high profile government figures were engaging in massive trafficking of mukula trees, and citizens were calling for a thorough investigation into the scandal, government quickly fabricated an issue that Hichilema sold the Lower Zambezi National Park to divert citizens’ attention from the illicit mukula trade.
When the Mwinilunga gold outrage hit the ceiling, from nowhere, they started accusing Hichilema of selling mines to divert citizens’ attention.
Then came the dazing wave of mysterious gas attacks that claimed lives of many citizens.
When citizens demanded for answers on who was gassing people and the mastermind, suddenly, they started saying Hichilema fraudulently won the presidency of the United Party for National Development in 2006 following the death of Anderson Mazoka, and accused him of being behind the gas attacks.
When citizens were opposing Bill 10, again they tried to divert people’s attention by enlivening the issue of privatisation accusing Hichilema of exploiting the exercise for personal gain.
They are now doing the same thing with the killing of Joseph Kaunda and Nsama Nsama by police officers.
A few days ago, the Minister of Home Affairs Stephen Kampyongo informed the nation about the presence of foreign mercenaries linked to a certain opposition leader intending to destabilise the country.
If there are mercenaries in the country, why ask them to leave instead of arresting them since Zambia is a signatory to the 1989 United Nations Mercenary Convention banning the use of mercenaries?
We know that Kampyongo is hallucinating because this is a thought-out political agenda setting scheme to divert citizens’ attention.
They always come up with a cock-and-bull story to divert citizens’ attention from important issues.
Therefore, they schemed the mercenary issue to stop citizens from demanding for answers on who killed Kaunda and Nsama by setting another piece of news to be the most important.
Of course, it has been easy for the PF regime to set the political agenda because they are in control of public and some private media houses.
As a result, media houses editors and managers are used as gatekeepers of their political agenda setting scheme to cover issues identified by PF politicians in order to divert citizen’s attention from their poor leadership.
Sorry to say, some non-government organisation leaders, government officials and influential personnel are also used as instruments of political agenda setting, making people such as Police Spokesperson Esther Katongo to make unprofessional statements that seem to be crafted from the PF secretariat.
Distraction is therefore PF government’s tactic to turn away citizens from its failures.
They think citizens are irrational not to see through their political agenda setting plots devised to distract people’s attention.
In this day and age, no amount of political priming by deliberately drawing attention to certain issues and not what citizens believe is important in order to alter the standards by which citizens evaluate national issues is going to work.
Besides, no amount of political framing by selective shaping and contextualisation of national issues will fool vigilant citizens.
We have an analytical citizenry that cannot merely adopt frames of political references to see things in a way the PF government wants.
Our citizens are capable of interrogating contexts within which national issues are encoded and decoded.
My argument is that the PF government is deliberately diverting citizens’ attention from serious national issues by cooking up situations implicating Hichilema of wrongdoing.
However, the strategy is not effective because citizens are able to see through the PF government’s political agenda setting machination.
Besides, it is difficult for the scheme to work on citizens who have made up their mind and have their eyes on the ball.
This, however, should not bring comfort to Hichilema because between now and the time parliament is expected to be dissolved, political agenda setting schemes devised against him will be increasingly dangerous.
For this reason, Hichilema cannot afford to be complacent about his safety and security.
In addition, he is competing for power with hard-core delinquents.
Their goal is clear; to ensure that Hichilema is not on next year’s presidential ballot papers no matter what, regardless, whatever happens, at any price, and come what may.