By Kellys Kaunda
WASTED YEARS
UPND and Hakainde Hichilema risk wasting their years in the opposition if they repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.
If they choose to repeat them as an act of vengeance for what PF and ECL did to them, then they are abusing the mandate given to them by the public.
The public doesn’t hand over its mandate only for an elected official to use it for personal gain.
Unfortunately, examples of the latter abound and are piling up.
Imagine in Hichilema’s government, an opposition leader is accosted by law enforcement agents at the airport on his way out and interrogated!
Hichilema experienced interference with his right to movement right within his own country.
Those images are still clearly vivid in the minds of Zambians. But he stayed the course because those are the kind of constitutional abuses he needed to come and change.
But for the same to be repeated under his watch is so bewildering, one wonders as to whether Hichilema understands the implication thereof.
It means he, retrospectively, is justifying what was done to him. He is also justifying in advance if the same is to happen to him when he is no longer in office.
But more painfully, he is saying his days in the opposition wilderness were wasted days.
A person who would desecrate his own sacrifices in this fashion only assumes power for personal reasons.
How else can you explain the repeat of exact scenes from a previous movie? And not a very old movie for that matter.
My earnest plea to Hichilema is for him to honor his time in the opposition and the lives of his comrades who died during the struggle against the undemocratic tendencies of his predecessor.
Honor them and respect the mandate of the Zambian people by restoring the freedoms you were denied.