ELECTIONS ISSUES
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With Simon Kabanda
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PREPAREDNESS OF POLITICAL PARTIES FOR AUGUST ELECTIONS
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Preparations for a next election begin immediately one election is over.
The last presidential and general elections in Zambia were held on Thursday 11 August 2016. The inauguration of the head of government, the Republican President, took place on Tuesday 13 September 2016. This means that the 2016 election was over on 13 September. Preparations for the next election, scheduled for Thursday 12 August 2021, were supposed to begin the following day, Wednesday 14 September 2016.
In 2016, nine (9) political parties participated in the presidential election. After the elections, how many of these political parties did a post-mortem of their participation in the 2016 elections? This should have been their first activity to prepare for the August 2021 election.
While the Patriotic Front (PF) and the United Party for National Development (UPND) got 50.35% and 47.63% of the total valid votes respectively, the other Seven (7) of these political parties got less than 1%: Forum for Democracy and Development (0.65%), People’s Alliance for Change (0.43), Rainbow Party (0.26), United Progressive People (0.25%), United National Independence Party (0.24%), Green Party of Zambia (0.12%), and the Democratic Assembly (0.06%).
The post-mortem should have helped them to critically analyse their performance. Lessons learnt from their past performance would have then helped them to plan to do better in the next election of August 2021.
Among the political parties contesting the presidential and general elections of 12 August 2021, which one started its preparations in September or October or November or December 2016? How many of them carried out a post-mortem of their participation in the 2016 elections?
Following the elections post-mortem, political parties should then embark on other activities such as re-organising and re-ordering their party. There should be membership mobilisation, and identification of leaders at various levels. Political parties are supposed to have leadership structures at national, provincial, district, constituency, ward, section and branch levels.
After re-organising and re-ordering their structures and leadership at various levels, they should then begin their outward activities to attract the electorate to them. For new political parties that have been formed after the 2016 elections, there is more work to be done to popularise them.
What a political party stands for should be made known to the electorate.
Between 2017 and today, how much have political parties been doing to attract the electorate to them? What unique features have they been presenting to make the electorate distinguish them? What ideologies have they been “selling” to the electorate? Do they even have ideologies that distinguish them from one another?
We are now less than five (5) months to the elections. How many political parties have publicised what they stand for? What they stand for should be documented in the party manifestos. And party manifestos are not supposed to be private documents. They should be publicised to the electorate. Different manifestos should help the electorate to identify the unique identities of political parties. Those who want to join a particular political party should be attracted by its manifesto.
Which of the political parties participating in the 2021 elections have made their party manifestos public? How many have made their manifestos user-friendly? Have they translated them in local languages? Have they produced leaflets on various issues in the manifestos to distribute to the electorate?
What other strategies are different political parties executing as they prepare to participate in the August elections? What messages have they come up with to attract the voters? What message of hope for a better life are they giving to the electorate?
Prior to the commencement of the voter registration exercise, I expressed a concern to one of my colleagues in civil society. I told him that I was worried that the voter registration exercise was commencing soon, and yet as civil society we had not done much to mobilise and sensitise and encourage the electorate to register as voters. He told me not to worry about this because the political parties, whose “life-line” in the elections was dependent on the votes would do that.
A few days before the closure of the voter registration exercise, this writer made a public note to leaders of political parties, as follows:
“A NOTE TO POLITICAL PARTIES
Dear leaders of political parties.
When the voter registration exercise closes on 12 December 2020, kindly produce numbers of people NOT REGISTERED as voters per polling station countrywide. This is extremely important.
SIMON KALOLO KABANDA
9 December 2020”
I think my colleague was wrong. To date, no political party has responded to this note, and none has produced numbers of people who have not been registered as voters, and not even the numbers of their members and supporters that have been disenfranchised.
Political parties, our observation is that you are concentrating more on de-campaigning others than campaigning for yourselves. This is not the message that should attract the electorate to vote for you. Tell the electorate why they should vote for you. Give them your message of hope for a better life beyond 12 August 2021. Publicise the content of your manifestos and explain how that would translate into bettering their lives.
Spend more time and resources on explaining to the voters why they should vote for you and less time on why they should not vote for the others,
(If you have any election related issue that you would like to be discussed on this column, kindly send a message to me either through sms, WhatsApp or email).
SIMON KALOLO KABANDA
Whatsapp: +260-761-206353
Email: shimwenya@gmail.com
20 March 2021
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About The Author: Simon Kalolo Kabanda is an Elections Monitoring Expert, with extensive elections monitoring experience since 1991.
He has also participated actively in the country’s electoral reforms.