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Explain what you will take to people, Mambo challenges NCC

Explain what you will take to people, Mambo challenges NCC
By Ernest Chanda
Tue 11 May 2010, 03:40 CAT

BISHOP John Mambo has challenged delegates to the National Constitutional Conference (NCC) to explain what they will take to the people after rejecting most of the clauses they wanted adopted.

In an interview, the former commissioner on the Mung’omba Constitutional Review Commission questioned the morality of delegates in rejecting what he termed popular clauses.

“It was not right for our colleagues in the NCC to reject popular clauses that Zambians wanted. And I will not stop talking because I was part of those who went around the country and heard what people demanded. The people wanted fifty plus one, and they also wanted an elected Vice-President.

Now, the fifty plus one which has caused us a lot of controversies in our elections was pushed to a referendum. And I’m asking NCC delegates to tell us what report they will take to the people? Is it what the people told them to adopt or it was their own decision?” Bishop Mambo asked. “Now the time has come for them to account for their decisions.

The biggest problem we have in this country is that we first look at ourselves other than serving the people. We thought that this time around people’s constitutional problems were going to be addressed by our colleagues in the NCC. Now that the report is going to the people I hope that our colleagues will revisit their decisions when this report comes back from the people.”

The NCC recently completed the plenary session and they will soon present a draft report to the public for scrutiny.

And Bishop Mambo asked the government to learn something from last week’s British elections where the Conservative Party won the most seats. He said there were many lessons to learn from those elections as compared to Zambia’s elections.

“I think our government should learn a lot of lessons from British elections and those from other democratic nations. First of all, those elections were issue-based; there was no name calling. And secondly there was no violence whatsoever; a total contradiction from the violence we experienced in Mufumbwe.

And then the counting process did not take time such that it did not bring suspicion in the minds of UK voters. But in our situation, counting would have taken four to five days. So, these are some of the lessons we should learn, especially that we are a former British colony,” said Bishop Mambo.

Labels: CONSTITUTION, JOHN MAMBO, NCC

posted by MrK @ 3:42 PM