Maravi

Ignore Levy's wish at your own peril

Ignore Levy's wish at your own peril
By Editor
Monday September 01, 2008 [04:00]

Time has come to reflect on President Levy Mwanawasa’s wishes regarding succession and continuity. We will live to regret if we don’t collectively stop to think and ask ourselves what could have been in the mind of Levy when he expressed the wish that finance minister Ng’andu Magande should succeed him. Why did he not do the obvious? Why didn’t he prefer his Vice-President to succeed him?

Levy brought both Magande and Vice-President Rupiah Banda into his government from political inactivity and political retirement. He knew both of them. He must have understood their strengths and weaknesses.

It is very important that we address this matter of leadership succession with level-headedness and cool minds. It is not about who we like or who we dislike. It shouldn’t even be about personal benefit.

It is about the 12 million Zambians and those not yet born. It is about the future of our country and the plight of our people; it is about the happiness and wellbeing of the great majority of Zambians who wallow in abject poverty with no hope, no future and not even a proper present.

These are the things that Levy was very concerned about. These are the things Levy talked about all the time – how to alleviate the sufferings of our people, how to move them out of poverty. It is about the dignity of every man and woman, every boy and girl in this country.

Our democracy is a young one. It has yet to mature and no wonder the level of our discourse has not yet reached full objectivity. People are not prepared to face facts and the truth.

And yet they expect the public to make choices. How can the public make choices without full information; without the full disclosure of information on the matters that they have to decide? If we are going to choose a leader as a country, all the contestants must be subjected to microscopic examinations, scrutiny.

Once they offer themselves for public office, they must be ready to subject themselves to the piercing torch of public scrutiny.

As we seek to answer the question ‘what could have been in Levy’s mind when he preferred Magande as his successor’, we need to examine the strengths of the two leading candidates. What is it that they bring to the table?

Magande brings a clear track record of successful and honest public service. He has distinguished himself as a man of integrity. It would appear this played heavily on Levy’s mind. Anxious to safeguard his legacy, he seems to have been intent on handing over to someone of good standing and ability.

Rupiah is past his prime. He is now in his 70s. And Levy did not want such a person to succeed him because the office of President, as his wife told us, is very demanding and requires an energetic person, someone who is not in a retirement mode.

If you get a tired leader or a leader who is not able to manage, whose administrative skills are weak, we will take the country back to the Chiluba era and probably even worse. We say this because it is very easy for people to do things in the name of the President without the President knowing. And if he is not energetic and vigilant, it is possible to build tyranny and cronyism right under his nose.

It is very evident from the behaviour of those around Rupiah, those championing his adoption as the MMD candidate in the forthcoming presidential by-election, that this is already happening. They are already showing worrying intolerance to divergent views. It is clear that if they had power, they would reverse most of the strides that we have made in deepening good governance.

Rupiah’s campaign reminds us of Frederick Chiluba’s third term campaign where poor people from all over the country, including pastors and chiefs, were paraded as evidence for the overwhelming support that Chiluba had to continue the third term.

At that time, there was an attempt to emasculate democracy within the MMD. Their activities were designed to buttress a falsehood, a lie that suggested that most Zambians wanted a third term. They even conducted fake opinion polls to prove it.

Vernon Mwaanga, as Chiluba’s information minister and chief government spokesman, was an integral part of this lie, of this third term falsehood and deception. Mwaanga has been recruited, or has hired himself out, to do the same thing once again.

Shamelessly, as Levy’s remains have been taken around the country to allow our citizens to pay their last respects in person, it seems Rupiah’s campaign team has been in top gear and busy extracting support petitions at every stop to create apparent spontaneity.

This is exactly what happened in 2001. Chiluba and his tandem of thieves did not want the nation to debate the third term issue and anybody doing so became an enemy.

We are also not surprised by Mbita Chitala’s behaviour at the state-owned Zambia Daily Mail on Saturday. We know that Chitala is working very closely with his very close friend, information minister and chief government spokesman Mike Mulongoti, in their campaign for Rupiah. And it is not surprising that Chitala has the audacity to threaten journalists, expecting submission.

These are things that should worry Zambians. It is an ominous sign which Zambians should not ignore that while Chitala is claiming to be interested in public service, he is telling these journalists that they should cover him in promotion of the Rupiah agenda because it is a matter of life and death. Surely, how can offering oneself for public service be so desperate as to be a matter of life and death? Are we at war?

Competition for public office should not be a matter of life and death. It should simply be a competition to serve. But this is how cash-and-carry politics are. It is clear that those congregating around Rupiah and making the loudest noises are cash-and-carry politicians who are bent intent on bringing back the brown envelope and politics of patronage.

But how else can these people carry out their hopeless agenda if not with lies, if not with patronage, if not with nepotism and even outright tribalism? The moral bankruptcy of these characters is frightening.

It is no wonder that most of those around Rupiah are people Levy had rejected – were either fired, not appointed to anything at all or were to be fired. This is the guidance Chitala claims to be giving to the nation in choosing their next leader. What type of guidance can come from this type of character? The only thing that can come from Chitala is misguidance of the nation.

It is said that you judge a person by the type of people who support him. If the Mwaangas, the Arthur Yoyos, the Chitalas and others like them are at the core of Rupiah’s campaign, then it is not difficult to discern what type of government they want to give us.

As we reflect on Levy’s wish, it will be very useful to the nation to look at Zambia before 2002, to examine what happened in the third term campaign when the likes of Mwaanga held sway.

We should not forget that Radio Phoenix was closed by Mwaanga to achieve political ends. What Chitala is showing is a clear sign of what we can expect from them if we ignore Levy’s wish. We will ignore Levy’s wish at our own peril.

Labels: MAGANDE, MMD, MWANAWASA, PRESIDENCY

posted by MrK @ 4:08 PM