Maravi

Rupiah's political miscalculations

Rupiah's political miscalculations
By Editor
Monday October 13, 2008 [04:00]

We are almost two weeks away from casting our votes for a candidate we want to preside over the affairs of our country up to the next elections in 2011.

We have been advised before that in exercising this very important democratic right, we must make our choices wisely and vote only for candidates who are known for their honesty, ability, dedication and concern for the welfare of all.

If our country is to move forward, honesty and hard work is demanded of all those who want to lead us. And those who are seeking to lead our country should be guided by good and positive values and in a country like ours which is predominantly Christian, they should be guided by gospel values.

And this in itself means that the province or district of their origin should not be an issue. It also means that their tribe should not in any way be a factor. Even the political party that has sponsored them should not take precedence over the requirements of honesty, ability, dedication and concern for the welfare of all.

And for this reason, we or anyone else for that matter, should have nothing of a personal nature that should stop us from supporting or giving our votes to any of the candidates who meets this criteria. Merit should be allowed to prosper. Common good should be the main criterion in all the decisions that we make.

We should scrutinise the people who have offered themselves as candidates in this presidential election and select our candidate according to the good we think they can do. All other things should be kept subordinate to the common or public good.

Rupiah Banda was on the political scene for a very long time. He dropped off and stayed away for many years. It was not until Levy Mwanawasa brought him back as his Vice-President in 2006 that Rupiah reemerged. He was not elected by anybody to be where he is today. And Rupiah has not won an election in this country in a very long time. Rupiah lost in 1991 as a parliamentary candidate.

Rupiah is simply a nominated member of parliament. If he does not win the election on October 30, he is out of the job. Rupiah has come back from nowhere and wants to be head of state. All the other candidates who are contesting have been around and people know them, their policies and what they stand for has been a matter for public discussion for a long time now.

Rupiah is the only one who is something of an unknown quantity. We have nothing against him, but for a man coming from nowhere to want to be president, we feel duty bound to examine his record. No one is going to defend Rupiah’s record except Rupiah himself.

No one can explain his past misdeeds except Rupiah himself. And we can only promise him one thing, we will keep reminding the public of what his misdeeds are until he himself explains things.

Rupiah needs to satisfy the Zambian people that he is fit for the job. There are a number of things that he needs to explain about his record and past history that bother us immensely.

It would help us if Rupiah could rise to the challenge and tell the nation that he is not a tribalist, that he has never practiced wako ni wako.

He needs to show us that when he was chief executive of the state-owned Namboard, he did not fill the organisation in a nepotistic way.

There is nothing personal about this. It is important that a man who wants to run the country should appreciate the danger and evil of regional politics. Although we are asking him to explain his behaviour at Namboard, we know that Rupiah has a problem, because we don’t have to look that far back to find tribalistic behaviour.

It is not long ago that he was telling the people of Eastern Province to vote for nobody else except for him who comes from there. He even went further to ask them not to entertain any presidential candidate who may stray there to campaign. Rupiah urged them to tell them to go back where they came from.

This is a very dangerous political practice that we should not entertain as a nation in any way. We have seen the horrors that this type of politics inflict on nations. We have seen it in Rwanda, Burundi and recently in Kenya where many lives and property were lost and thousands of people displaced due to reckless and irresponsible tribal politics.

When we raise these issues, we harbour no hatred for Rupiah but love for him and more importantly, love for our country.

We say this because there can be no better expression of love for a wrongdoer, for someone doing wrong, than to stop him or prevent him from doing wrong. Rupiah’s politics are bad, are reeking with discrimination and corruption in every pore. To stop them is not an expression of hatred for Rupiah but love for him and the people of Zambia.

Rupiah has to quickly realise that accountability starts now and not after one is elected president. He needs to show us that in his long career of public service, he has been a man of action, that he has delivered.

Rupiah was senior governor of Lusaka and enjoyed a lot of support from the then president Dr Kenneth Kaunda.

Now that he is campaigning to be president of the country, let him point to his achievements in Lusaka, let him show the people what he did as governor of Lusaka. What development did he preside over in Lusaka? These are not unfair questions. These are honest questions seeking honest answers and only he can answer. Rupiah cannot continue to claim experience without being able to show the nation the fruits, the works, the results of that experience and how it benefitted the people and how it will continue to benefit them if he was voted president.

We know of people who claim many years of experience and have nothing to show for it. Experience is not necessarily the number of years or activities one has touched.

Experience is measured by what one has done and can show to have done. A CV full of so many things without any success is not better than a short one that carried a strong promise with it.

What Rupiah seems to have, unless he can explain or show otherwise, is experience of doing nothing, of achieving nothing other than being lucky to be appointed to this and that.

We have no doubt that if we asked Rupiah what his personal and private achievements are during and after the time that he was in public office, he would not hesitate to show us his achievements because we are sure they are many.

He must have at one time owned one company or the other, bought this property or the other, got this plot or the other from the council. We expect him to speak with the same ease about his achievements for the public: ‘I did this or I did that.’ To simply say I have a lot of experience will not do.

When one wants to become president and people raise serious and verifiable allegations of corruption, silence is not an option. Rupiah needs to assure the public that he is not corrupt, he doesn’t bribe.

Indeed if he was corrupt, he should tell the public that he has stopped and allow the Zambian people to decide whether they want a president who was corrupt and now claims to have stopped. His campaign team should not cheat him.

The James Lukuku saga has not ended, it is eating him like a cancer and may send him to his political grave. People are worried because the similarities between the 2008 Lukuku bribery scandal and the 1991 Claudius Sakala electoral bribery scandal are too similar to be mere coincidence. Silence on the Sakala K20,000 scandal will not help Rupiah.

His attempt to deny the Lukuku bribery has failed because of contradictions by the chairman of his own campaign team and the clarity of Lukuku’s own testimony. Rupiah has kept quiet after Mike Mulongoti said as a big party, they support smaller parties financially.

According to Rupiah and Mulongoti, this is a good enough explanation and they don’t owe the Zambian people any explanation for this incident of blatant electoral corruption. This is clearly telling the Zambian people what type of president Rupiah wants to be.

When Rupiah was campaigning to be adopted as the MMD’s presidential candidate, his election agent Ben Tetamashimba told the nation that Rupiah should be the candidate so that the MMD can use national resources for their campaign. Rupiah has never distanced himself from this statement.

In fact, all indications are that he has fully embraced this arrangement. Over and above his entitlement, he seems to be very comfortable using government assets to transport and look after his campaign team. Rupiah is doing all this in the full view of all Zambians. He shouldn’t complain when we comment on these issues. He is doing everything so wrongly.

Rupiah has been adopted as MMD presidential candidate at a time when many Zambians felt a lot of sympathy for what his predecessor Levy Mwanawasa stood for and tried to do. Rupiah and his campaign team for their part have been in a hurry to distance themselves from Levy’s legacy. They are so determined to do everything that Levy would have disapproved of.

Rupiah and his sponsors have been very quick to embrace Frederick Chiluba, a shameless corrupt character, in the hope that this would improve their electoral fortunes.
Rupiah has gathered around himself a band of obnoxious fellows and shameless opportunists who have no capacity to work with others and cannot drive a political movement to an electoral victory.

These are people who will not even tell him the truth about the mistakes that he is making. Surely, somebody should have told him that embracing Chiluba is a political kiss of death. Ask Michael Sata!

No one has forced Rupiah to make these politically costly mistakes and yet now that they have realised that they have lost ground, they want to blame everybody else for their political miscalculations and misfortunes. Somehow they believe that if only The Post didn’t comment about their misdeeds, their fortunes would have been better. This is naïve.

The Zambian people see what they stand for and will judge them accordingly come October 30.

Labels: RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 4:52 AM