The death of UDA
The death of UDABy Editor
Sunday July 29, 2007 [04:00]
GOING by the acrimony that immediately followed its birth, especially the differences over the question of its presidential candidate in last year’s elections, it was clear that the survival of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) was threatened.
In fact, no sooner had the UDA been born than it turned itself into a white elephant. It is indeed sad that the quest for political dialogue and unity among our political parties and their leaders continues to be elusive at a time when political alliances should be one way of making sure that our democratic culture is improved and generally that our democracy becomes more useful and meaningful.
First it was the Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) which indicated that its position in the UDA was becoming untenable. The final straw to the alliance could not have been better demonstrated than through what we saw in the last by-election in Kapoche where one alliance partner, UNIP, decided to field its own candidate against Charles Banda who had received the UDA stamp. By this decision, UNIP had made it categorical that it was done with UDA.
So it is less surprising that Hakainde Hichilema, the leader of another alliance partner – the UPND – has decided to come out in the open that UDA is no more. What a painful death to what should have been an example that political parties can put aside their narrow or sectional interests and come together in national interest.
But as we had stated even as we welcomed the formation of UDA as a positive development in the political history of our country, our type of politics still remains opportunistic, largely based on expediency. There are no principles involved in the political alliances that we see in our politics. Little wonder we can have politicians parading themselves as new members of the MMD when only the other day they were standing on an anthill, mercilessly pounding the ruling party and its politicians. This is how cheap we have made our politics; there are no principles involved in our politics.
We do appreciate that political alliances may not necessarily require adherence to principles, because by nature they are based on expediencies such as contesting elections as a single entity in order to increase chances of winning and therefore forming government. However, we think that no value will be added to our democracy as long as our politicians continue to be driven by selfish interests.
In the case of UDA, for instance, we know that a lot of selfishness was exhibited by some leaders of the alliance and this actually explains why one leader of this alliance was nowhere near the presidential campaigns even when the heat of that moment required that all the leaders of the alliance go full-throttle in the electoral battle zone.
But there are many reasons why our politicians should start looking at political alliances not on the basis of short-term expediencies such as elections. We need to start seeing formation of political alliances that focus their attention to greater goals and objectives that add value to our democracy and that offer an opportunity for political sanity in our otherwise confused setup where political party formation is as good as a hobby – anyone can wake up, gather members of their family and register a political party and possibly stand as a presidential candidate.
The developments in the UDA should offer us an opportunity to reflect on what we think ought to be the purpose of political alliances. We need to start asking ourselves why and if we really need political alliances. As we have stated already, political alliances can be based on a number of considerations and they do not necessarily have to be correct or right.
First, political alliances can either be formed for political convenience or based on ideology, philosophy or shared values and expectations. Also, for an alliance to be effective and efficient there must be common grounds, interests and goals that alliance members should be pursuing. Finally, alliances may be permanent or temporary and may be forged for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons may be positive while others may be opportunistic and survivalist.
And looking at the UDA today, we see that some of these elements or characteristics are very true about this political alliance whose demise can to a great extent be explained by these same tendencies. We can actually state confidently that there were no concrete common grounds by the parties involved because if that were the case, we should not have witnessed the kind of acrimony we saw over the choice for their presidential candidate.
And we can also safely say that there was a lot of opportunism as some alliance leaders were not willing to give up on certain things or demands just to ensure that their opportunistic agenda was not lost. We can also say that some of the members of the UDA were on a survivalist agenda because left alone, without having to hide within the shell of UDA, they could have long died and they were not even going to be a factor in last year’s elections.
But there are many reasons why politicians should start taking political alliances seriously. We think that if political alliances are formed around certain principles or ideologies and centred on agreeable or agreed upon common grounds, they have a better chance of survival. And the survival of political alliances has a positive corollary effect in terms of their ability to help overcome the political fragmentation we see in the country and therefore help increase participation of society in politics.
We think this is the best way to go, given the fact that most of our political parties today lack a national character as they are based on regional or tribal formations. Political alliances could help correct this anomaly in our politics because we need to shift from sectional politics so that citizens start making their political choices not on the basis of regional or tribal inclinations of political parties but on the basis of which political formation has the capacity to implement policies and programmes that would be materially beneficial to themselves.
That said, the death of UDA - although it has always been expected - is regrettable because it has negative consequences for political parties in terms of their cohesiveness and effectiveness.
posted by MrK @ 7:02 AM
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