THE WAR IN PF HAS JUST BEGUN
The Scoop Editorial: May 3, 2022
BELIEVE it or not, there may be no general conference for the Patriotic Front (PF) unless the current strategy from its acting president Given Lubinda and his followers changes. This is why in our editorial comment the other day, we categorically stated that “when and if” the general conference will take place.
Do you have any slightest idea why Lubinda abrogated the PF constitution by increasing the number of Members of the Central Committee to 72 and still intends to make it 80 by appointing 8 more? Listen, at the Convention, a new Central Committee is supposed to be ushered in. A new president is supposed to be elected.
If a new Central Committee is supposed to be ushered in, why waste time appointing new people who will only serve one month or so before another committee comes in? What is their role within this short time? Is it possible that the new PF president will appoint the same people to serve under him? No!
So, here is the issue. Former president Edgar Lungu’s invisible hand is very much at work. The whole issue is to put an unpopular PF president who will be answerable to Lungu and this will further weaken the PF as the main opposition political party.
By 2026, PF members will have bruised each other like male buffaloes fighting for mating rights. By the time the country will be goes to the polls, most PF members, especially presidential hopefuls, will be licking their wounds. Hold on, we will come to this issue later. Let us look at the glaring bleach of the PF constitution to facilitate for this.
Article 57(7)(b) of the PF constitution on election of Members of Central Committee says no person shall be eligible for election as a Member of the Central Committee unless he/she is a member of the party for at least five years. For how long has Raphael Nakacinda been in the PF for him to be in the Central Committee? It doesn’t matter because he is Lungu’s boy.
To show you further how the PF abuses its own constitution to favour the desire of a few individuals, on March 30, 2021, Charles Kakoma resigned from the UPND to join the PF. Exactly 12 days later, on April 11, 2021, he was appointed to the PF Central Committee. And who justified his appointment? It was Brian Mundubile, the same one who has been frozen out now because of harbouring presidential ambitions.
Mundubile justified Kakoma’s appointment by relying on Article 70 of the party constitution on national council and standing orders which provides that regulations and Standing Orders approved by the National Council shall be read as part of this Constitution and may be amended, rescinded or altered as provided in the Constitution.
We know that the PF constitution may be amended by the general conference of the party provided a notice of the proposed amendment has been circulated to members of the national council not less than one month before the meeting, according to Article 70.
The last PF General Conference was held from 10 -11 April 2021. Was the constitution amended to allow toddlers in the party like Kakoma to be appointed to the Central Committee less than two weeks after joining? If so, where is the amended constitution that Mundubile was talking about? Why has it been kept a secret if at all it exists?
But you see, they say Karma is a bitch. The same wrong things that Mundubile lugubriously defended have come back to devour him. Today, newcomer Nakacinda is in the Central Committee making decisions for the party while he is not. Kakoma would have been in the Central Committee had he not decided to run away while Mundubile is outside the wire whining.
Why was Mundubile dropped from the Central Committee yet he has fervently served the party for such a long period of time? Because he is a presidential hopeful and is an independent-minded man, these are the people Lungu doesn’t want.
He deals with stooges. Lungu and Lubinda’s relationship stems back to the UPND days when both were members. So, he would rather work with the devil he knows than angels who may be difficult to control. This is part of the bargaining process to which most of us are not privy. We will not go into detail because we still want to go and sleep on comfortable beds.
Is there any chance that Chishimba Kambwili and Emmanuel Mwamba could still stand as presidential candidates despite not having been members of the PF for five years as stipulated by the constitution? Yes. How? By first amending the constitution at the next General Conference as we stipulated above and reducing the time-frame to accommodate them.
Will it be done? Olo one day! Why? Because Mundubile, Kambwili, and Mwamba think independently and have more following than Lubinda and his bloated illegal Central Committee combined and cannot agree to work as stooges for anyone.
So, what is the way forward? The appointment of an illegal and bloated Central Committee is for endorsement purposes. Next month, we may be told that the party does not have money to go to the General Conference after which an announcement may be made that Lubinda or someone else who is controllable has been endorsed by the same bloated committee to be party president ahead of the 2026 general elections.
If this does not work, planning for the general conference will go ahead but then, the three Mailoni Brothers we have mentioned above will be nowhere near because, firstly, they will not qualify to be part of the General Conference and secondly, they will not be eligible to file as presidential hopefuls. Will the conference then go ahead? Probably not because there will be serious confusion. The three have the numbers capable of disrupting the conference.
Is Mundubile, Kambwili, and Mwamba planning to form a new political party? No! These want to fight the PF from inside. Just ignore some social media lies you were fed with the other day because they have no aorta of truth in them. The trio will cause serious havoc inside PF.
So, the endorsement route is the most probable. This is not something new. Lungu himself was never voted for as PF president throughout his entire life.
On November 30, 2014 he went unopposed after other presidential hopefuls could not make it into the conference due to unprecedented violence. No vote was cast. It was voting by raising hands. Sylvia Masebo remembers that day like yesterday as she was clobbered blue-black when she, as PF chairperson for elections, attempted to annul the election of Lungu at the last minute. Gunshots were fired.
On April 11, 2021, he was again endorsed by over 2,000 delegates as PF president after the Central Committee led by Davies Mwila previously endorsed his sole candidature saying they already had a party president ahead of the 2021 elections and there was no need to accommodate others and subject him to a vote.
We smell another endorsement from this illegal but bloated Central Committee very soon but there will be casualties on the way. The PF had a chance of making it and coming back stronger given the fact that the political environment is not as hostile as what they presented to opposition political parties when they were in power but greed is what will kill them.
If the PF is not careful, they will push themselves into extinction sooner than UNIP and MMD combined because they have maintained their thuggery, arrogance, tribal, and regional politics and they think that is what will resuscitate them.
The tribal story actually is one of the many evils that got them booted out of power but people like Nakacinda do not seem to have learnt anything from that episode. For now, we will keep watching from the terraces and see the drama unfold.- The Scoop Newspaper