What was the purpose of Thursday’s meeting between leaders of political parties and the Electoral Commission of Zambia?
Was it about informing political party leaders about its work? Was it about dialogue with the leaders of political parties? Was it about consensus building?
Whatever this meeting was about it hasn’t been achieved. The meeting was a joke, a waste of time and money. It was a circus.
It’s senseless for an institution like the Electoral Commission of Zambia that seriously lacks credibility to call for such useless meetings.
This was a meeting for puppets to showcase their loyalty to Edgar Lungu. Every word, sentence of theirs was intended for Edgar’s ears.
We also had outright clowns who also wanted to perform and catch the attention of those they thought mattered.
There were those who were very excited by the recognition, by being invited to a meeting of “presidents of political parties”. Some of them could not manage to conceal their excitement. They started making social media postings about this great meeting and their attendance.
Then we had those like Edgar with nothing to say and remained silent throughout, just entertaining their eyes and ears from the circus.
No one can deny the need for the Electoral Commission of Zambia to build some reasonable levels of consensus on the electoral process. But it cannot be achieved in this way – through such meetings. That meeting was nothing but a platform for posturing. Intelligent people, like the commissioners of the Electoral Commission of Zambia, if well intentioned cannot fail to come up with more intelligent ways of building consensus among the key stakeholders.
And when people who are believed to be intelligent start acting unwisely suspicion rises. People start to think that their weaknesses are deliberate and conscious. And are intended to achieve a certain outcome. This is the case with the Electoral Commission of Zambia.