THE ECONOMETRICS OF FINDING THE NEXT PRESIDENT FOR THE PATRIOTIC FRONT- WHO IS GOING TO CRACK IT?
By Alexander Nkosi
Politics isn’t just for Politicians, even Economists are interested in politics because while technocrats will provide guidance based on theoretical and empirical evidence, in our context, politicians drive the development vehicle. This is why the future of opposition political parties should interest every well meaning citizen. We need a strong opposition to provide evidence based alternative solutions to our social and economic challenges. Given this background, allow me to share my views on who should be the next President for the Patriotic Front, the largest opposition political party.
It is important to recognise that we face difficult economic challenges as a country, therefore we need politics for development and not just politics with a sole focus on taking over leadership. There are four things PF needs to look at:
1. A convention cannot give PF the best candidate because the people who will be choosing also need to be changed. So even before thinking about a convention, PF needs to recognise that the interim leadership should reorganise the structures because current leadership in structures perpetuated tendencies which Zambians hated and voted against in 2021. Bringing these leaders to a convention expecting them to give the opposition political party a better candidate is self deception.
2. Most leaders in PF either have running cases in court, under investigation, have cases which might be reopened or there is a chance that they might be investigates depending on their public and private undertakings the past ten years. Any leader who falls withing this bracket defined above will be a liability to the opposition political party as they will spend more time in court and not organising the party. The JIT isn’t messing around, if you did something wrong they will definitely come for you. Given this background, the next President for PF should be someone with a clean track record and no running cases in court or potential of being investigated. The best sign of rebranding is the ability by most leaders who know they fall in this bracket to step back and support others.
3. Zambians rejected PF in 2021, the next President should represent a shift from that which Zambians detested. PF had the chance to run mining sector, why did they end up borrowing so much? Did they only realise that they had mines after leaving power? What is it that the new President would do differently and why should people buy in? PF had chance to run agriculture, manufacturing and tourism? Did they leave a diversified economy? What will the new President do differently? In short, the new President should represent a departure from the old way of doing things. The new President should have a solid and feasible plan of dealing with development finance, debt, unemployment and high cost of living. The new President should have clear strategies of how mining, agriculture, tourism and manufacturing will be handled differently.
4. The new PF President should have a traceable track record of performance. If they are or have been member of Parliament before, what innovative ideas have they implemented in their constituencies which would show that once they are given a much bigger role they would deliver? If they were Minister, Permanent Secretary, Ambassador or held any known leadership position be it within or outside government, what game changing innovations did they implement? What leadership qualities have they demonstrated in positions they held in the past?
Gone are the days when leadership was about how much someone could talk and how much money they had- the new leadership has to match the complex nature of our problems in this modern and dynamic global political economy. The question therefore is, does any of the candidates that have applied meet the criteria outlined in this article? If there is someone who meets the criteria, then well and good but if there is none then what is the way forward? Do they need to look for a retired politician like Elias Chipimo, rebrad the structures and let the big wigs support him in the background? Do they pick young guys like Kang’ombe? Do they merge with Socialist Party and let Fred lead? The biggest challenge facing PF is the ability for most of their leaders to step aside and let others lead, something which might reduce the former ruling party into a support group for those with court cases.
Thank you.