Maravi

Rupiah, his image builders and their make-up

Rupiah, his image builders and their make-up
By Editor
Friday October 17, 2008 [04:00]

Justice Florence Mumba and her staff at the Electoral Commission of Zambia have a duty to ensure that the October 30 presidential election is conducted as openly as possible, so that citizens are confident that the results are accurate and the government that will emerge from there does, indeed, rest upon their consent.

Justice Mumba also has a duty to ensure that the practice where the ruling party, MMD, is being allowed to abuse its position by using unlimited government resources in its campaign for Rupiah Banda is checked.

We cannot have an election which is being dubbed as free and fair in which government resources are being used by Rupiah for his campaign as if they were his. The Electoral Commission needs to send a very strong message to Rupiah and his handlers that this is not acceptable.

The party in power may enjoy some advantages of incumbency, but the rules and conduct of the election contest must be fair by ensuring that a limit is put to what advantages Rupiah may enjoy as Vice-President of the Republic.

There is a reason for these rules. Elections are only useful to a society if they are conducted in a free and fair way resulting in a clear reflection of the will of the people. Anything that distorts this process should never be allowed and is dangerous in the long-term.

And the ability to conduct free and fair elections is at the core of what it means to call a society democratic.

Abuse of public resources is not the only threat that there is to holding free and fair elections. Transparency and accountability in the conduct of elections is also very important. Indeed, the election is held for the people to express their opinion. They should be free to see how the process through which they express their opinion is managed. And the only part of this process that should be secret is the casting of the vote itself – everything else should be transparent and verifiable by the stakeholders.

None of us can ever say that the Electoral Commission and its processes are perfect. But its deficiencies and shortcomings should be part of the verification process by stakeholders so that at the end of the day, the process is acceptable to all the players. In this way, the result of the election is unlikely to be contested.

We do not expect the Electoral Commission to be perfect nor can it be. But we expect it to be magnanimous and humble in reacting to its shortcomings. When mistakes are made and discovered, they should be accepted and fully acknowledged and promptly corrected to the satisfaction of all. The Commission should never be shy to publicly say they erred. Failure to accept this creates an impression that what happened was not a mistake but a deliberate act intended to deceive, cheat or defraud the electorate. And when this happens, suspicions of rigging that could lead to a breakdown of law and order emerge.

There must be a reason why we have always had a judge as the overseer of our electoral processes. A judge, in our understanding, is trained never to prejudge and always to hear all sides of the argument. It is not enough that a judge has done justice in the matter that they are handling. Civilised societies require that where justice is done, it must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

This is the challenge that justice Florence Mumba is up against. She must be ready to let the light of public scrutiny shine through every hidden recess of the operations of the Electoral Commission. She is at the moment presiding over a process that makes a difference between Zambia going forward or regressing into anarchy.

We can never overemphasise the importance of the next election being perceived as free and fair. It is not enough for the Electoral Commission to stand and tell the nation that the election was free and fair. They must strive to ensure that people feel that indeed the election has been free and fair.

This will not happen if the Electoral Commission will look on helplessly as Rupiah and his sponsors continue to abuse public resources in support of his campaign. We can never argue that Rupiah, as someone exercising some of the functions of the president, is not entitled to some of the facilities of the office.

On the contrary, no one can convince us that it is right for Rupiah to commandeer three government-owned aircraft on his campaign trail. This is clear abuse.

If anyone is in doubt as to what kind of government Rupiah wants to run if he is elected president, just look at what he has been doing. How can Rupiah’s campaign justify carrying their image builders using Ministry of Health transport, ambulances?

This is an insult to the people of Zambia. We know that many of our people who desperately need transport to obtain necessary medical attention can never dream of getting this transport and yet Rupiah and his sponsors have no problem in diverting government automobiles and other resources to their campaign. This is before they are elected and in full view of the nation, of the voters! If they can do this when we are all looking and they are seeking our votes, what are they doing in secret, what will they do when we have given them our votes?

The whole idea of hiring image builders is questionable in the first place. Instead of telling people what he is going to do for them if elected, Rupiah has hired magicians to come and hypnotise the people and hoodwink them into voting for him. This is what image builders do. They are not very different from dishonest salesmen who will sell whatever they are asked to sell.

They don’t care about its quality, they just want to sell. What these image builders are trying to do with Rupiah is put him in a beautiful wrapper and make Zambians think they are buying choice meat when it is simply Nyama Soya – an imitation of meat. It is also not different from what beauticians do to us with makeup.

The problems that this country faces do not require make-up – they do not need image builders, we need real solutions and not fake ones. The money Rupiah is spending on these image builders could have built so many primary schools and clinics in our compounds, in our villages. But in his own wisdom, Rupiah has decided to send this money to England and America to enrich the already rich.

But also it shows a high sense of desperation on Rupiah’s part. Why should a person who is all the time in touch with his people, try to colour himself using image builders for him to be acceptable, to be electable? What is he hiding? What is it that the image builders are meant to hide? It means that Rupiah is not electable on his own, without make-up by the image builders, who have now resorted to using public resources to carry their make-up kits for Rupiah. And if we are not careful, with this make-up, with this image building, we may end up buying, voting for a gong’a.

No amount of political plastic surgery will bring Rupiah closer to the people. The only way to be close to the people is to be real and take steps towards them. We are not in the UK or America where people choose candidates the way they choose cosmetics in shops. We are in Africa, in Zambia – the real Africa, and we face real problems. Our people are looking for real solutions not spin doctors such as the ones Rupiah has hired. He is wasting money and taking the Zambian people for granted.

And this is not the first time that the Ministry of Health is being abused in election campaigns. Frederick Chiluba did it in 2001 and look where Kashiwa Bulaya ended up. We are surprised that Simon Miti, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health, who worked for Bulaya and knows very well what happened to Bulaya, can commit the resources of the Ministry of Health to Rupiah’s campaign.

It is sad to see how Mike Mulongoti is ending up. He does not seem to have any shame in defending what is clearly wrong. His cynicism is a direct insult to the Zambian people. To suggest that Rupiah’s image builders may have been hired by the Ministry of Health is to take for granted the intelligence of our people. This is the same Mulongoti who said there was nothing wrong with bribery as long as it was a senior party bribing a junior party, in the James Lukuku bribery scandal.

These things may appear insignificant to some people but they are not. They demonstrate a general disregard for the rule of law and the predisposition towards abuse of authority.

The Electoral Commission should not look helplessly at these matters. They need to give confidence to the people by clearly, categorically and fairly denouncing such activities. Their silence in the light of such overwhelming evidence only serves to undermine the integrity of the institution and the confidence that people have in its ability to run fair elections.

It is their failure to deal with blatant abuses such as the one Rupiah and his sponsors have engaged in that makes it difficult for people to believe them when they say they have made a genuine mistake on another matter.

Justice Mumba should be very concerned about the ballot incident from the other day. It shows a total lack of confidence in the Electoral Commission which could spell disaster for our country. If people believe that the institutions that are set up to defend their interests are not doing so, it leaves them open to manipulation and could leave them with no choice but to take the law in their own hands.

We should learn lessons from what has happened in Zimbabwe and what happened in Kenya. Lack of confidence in the electoral authorities of those countries led to serious disturbances, loss of lives and property and dislocations of many innocent and helpless people.

We should not pretend that the job that justice Mumba has to do is an easy one. In many ways, it is a thankless job but she accepted to do it. It is not too late for her to grow the confidence that the public should have in her institution. All she has to do is to ensure that the spirit and letter of the law that she is administering is fully implemented in the most transparent and accountable way.

The Electoral Commission should not allow Rupiah’s political plastic surgeons to use public resources for their regrettable activities. They are not doing this for the love of Rupiah, for the love of MMD or indeed for the love of Zambia. They are doing it for money in the same way mercenaries are used in fighting dirty wars. However, it is important for the Zambian people to know what is going on and to make their choices without being influenced by make-up, by small and artificial things.

Labels: RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 4:02 AM