MCDONALD Chipenzi says President Edgar Lungu’s attempt to manipulate the Constitution and contest elections for a third time is evil and must be stopped by any person interested in constitutionalism.
Lungu was sworn-in as Zambia’s sixth President at National Heroes Stadium in Lusaka on Sunday, January 25, 2015. He was 59.
After August 11, 2016, President Lungu was re-elected with 1,860,877 votes (50.35 per cent), against UPND leader Hakainde Hichilema’s 1,760, 347 votes (47.63 per cent) – a difference of 100,530 votes.
Hichilema disputed the result and sought legal intervention in the Constitutional Court of Zambia.
However, the court dismissed Hichilema’s presidential petition on a technicality on September 5, 2016.
President Lungu was, for a second time, sworn-in on Tuesday, September 13, 2016 at the venue for his first inauguration.
Article 106(3) of the Constitution of Zambia prevents a person who has twice held the Office of President from standing again for that office.
Chipenzi, the executive director of Governance, Elections, Advocacy, Research Services (GEARS) Initiative Zambia, advised President Lungu to listen: “and listen attentively” to his fellow lawyers like John Sangwa, Dr Fred M’membe, Elias Chipimo among others, regarding his desire to re-contest presidential election for the 3rd time in a row.
He said the fact that legal minds continue to advise him that he would be committing a treasonable offence to offer himself for nomination, when he is ineligible, was enough advice to heed to and avoid being charged after his term office is done.
“Let him go and rest after August 12 general election, instead of hiding under the ConCourt judgment which did not even concern him,” Chipenzi said, in a statement on Wednesday.
He promised President Lungu and his backers that should he insist into filing in his presidential nomination papers for the August 12 general election, “we shall all join John Sangwa and others in petitioning President Lungu’s eligibility in court.”
“[We want to] put it on record that he does not qualify, so that when he leaves office, whenever that will be, he is brought to account,” he said, while hoping that Zambia must be moving towards breaking the circle of arresting her former Presidents. “But if this drunkenness with power and authority continues and their conduct that leaves much to be desired persists, then the perpetuation of this circle is guaranteed.”
Chipenzi said President Lungu has held office twice and that he could not blindfold Zambians that he had only served for one term, using the ConCourt judgment, “which never was to challenge his nomination.”
He said a nomination challenge could only be done after one had validly been nominated by the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ), and not before.
Chipenzi said the ECZ ought to make the presidential nomination form public for the public to scrutinise whether the provision of Article 106(3), on holding office twice, was one of the disqualification in the nomination process.
“Nominations forms must not be held and kept in secrecy by the ECZ. They must be public documents for all to see and scrutinise whether some of the people vying for those positions qualify and help in involving the public in the vetting system of those vying for public offices,” Chipenzi said. “Challenging candidates after nomination or election must not be the preserve of the competing or losing candidates but all Zambians, once the nomination forms are made public to all to scrutinise.”
He said the public must know what rules applied to candidates who were vying for various elective public positions.
Chipenzi said such public disclosure of rules for candidates should include presidential candidates for members of the public to defend the Constitution from being abrogated, violated and overthrown by: “unscrupulous individuals, as instructed by Article 2 of the Republican Constitution.”
“Therefore, we reiterate the call on President Lungu not to listen to bamushanina ubwali (bootlickers). They are a political and democratic danger and menace,” said Chipenzi. “We say no to President Lungu’s manipulation of the Constitution…It is evil and must be stopped by any person in the business of promoting constitutionalism.”