Taking partisan positions is killing debate – Habasonda

Taking partisan positions is killing debate – Habasonda
By Mwala Kalaluka
Mon 01 Feb. 2010, 04:01 CAT

SOUTHERN African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (SACCORD) executive director Lee Habasonda has said people’s arguing from very partisan lines is what is killing debate in Zambia.

And William Harrington has said revelations from the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) that there was a government side and the other side during the voting on the 50 per cent plus one proves that the MMD had driven the process.

During a discussion on the constitutional review process organised by SACCORD in collaboration with the Press Freedom Committee (PFC) of The Post last Friday, Habasonda said the midway analysis especially in the constitution-making process had been lost.

“What has killed debate in this country is that people argue from very partisan positions,” Habasonda said. “We are worried that constitution process seems to be discussing individuals, not the principles that make a constitution.”

And reacting to NCC spokesperson Mwangala Zaloumis’s revelation that the government side could not garner two-thirds and the other people could also not garner the two-thirds on the 50 per cent plus one vote, Harrington, who was one of the commissioners in the Mung’omba Constitutional Review Commission, said Zaloumis had let the cat out of the bag.

“No one can misquote you. It was very clear what you said, my sister,” Harrington told Zaloumis. “You can see the lobbying of the MMD government against the will of the people.”

Harrington said the NCC had dribbled the people of Zambia over the 50 per cent plus one.

“The NCC has set itself on war path, and I am using this term in invented commas…with the Zambian people over the 50 per cent plus one,” said Harrington.

In response to Harrington’s assertions, Zaloumis said what she meant was that no one side could override the other during the secret voting on the 50 per cent plus one.

“What I was talking about was that not even the government could override the decision of others. I was giving an example,” Zaloumis said. “In a position like that, you are going to have the government voting on the other side, the civil society on the other side.”

Meanwhile, second republican president Frederick Chiluba’s spokesperson, Emmanuel Mwamba, accused the country’s civil society of having disrupted the constitution-making process.

“Civil society has been disruptive too. We can’t just blame the government,” Mwamba said.
Mwamba said the civil society should also shoulder the blame for the protracted constitutional review process because they had undermined the government by opting to stay away from the NCC.

He wondered what right people in civil society organisations and three church mother bodies had to comment on the constitution-making process outside the NCC.

“Here, we have Mr Simon Kabanda saying disband the NCC, disruptive process,” said Mwamba.

But former Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) president William Mweemba said even those Zambians that chose to stay away from the NCC had every right to comment on the process because the NCC was not a totality of the constitution-making process.

Youth activist Mulenga Fube also disagreed with Mwamba’s position and he said the civil society’s decision to stay away from the NCC was in good faith and not in bad faith given the issues of a composition that favoured the government.