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CARITAS analyses PF, UPND Pact problems

CARITAS analyses PF, UPND Pact problems
By George Chellah
Tue 13 July 2010, 04:30 CAT

CARITAS Zambia executive director Sam Mulafulafu yesterday observed that one of the problems facing the PF and UPND pact is the delay in resolving and publicly announcing who shall lead the alliance in the 2011 general elections.

Giving an analysis of the PF/UPND pact problems, Mulafulafu said the opposition needed to put their act together. He said political alliances had been attempted in the past to try and overcome the problem of vote splitting but the results had still remained disastrous.

“The UDA in the 2001 election is a case in point. First of all, the Zambian Constitution does not provide for coalition governments. A wining party has to be a single entity. The experience of an alliance that presents one presidential candidate but competes among themselves at Parliamentary and local government levels has been confusing to the electorate even in situations where constituencies and wards are shared among the cooperating political parties,” Mulafulafu said.

“With the low literacy levels among our voters, it sounds funny to the electorate to be told by a campaigning parliamentary or council candidate that in the parliamentary or local government vote (which ever the case may be), vote for me but for the president, vote for candidate so and so from another party.

“It really does not make sense to an average voter. In fact, some candidates won’t even make an effort to campaign for the chosen presidential candidate if that candidate is not from their party. This must be a learning point for the UPND/PF pact; to convince the electorate that they are a two in one party may be a daunting task.”

Mulafulafu said in his organisation’s view, and given the Zambian political context, mergers had a greater chance of succeeding than alliances.

“A merger presents one party though it needs sufficient time to be sold to the rank and file of the merging parties. But at the end of the day, It’s either one belongs to the new bigger party or moves on to another one. One of the problems we see in the UPND/PF Pact, even within the context of an alliance, is the delay in resolving and publicly announcing who shall lead the alliance in the 2011 election. It is folly to continue speaking in tongues on this matter and pretending that this decision will not have a backlash,” Mulafulafu said.

“We may be wrong but we suspect that the conviction about the alliance may be more at the upper ranks of both parties and diminishes as you go down. The rank and file on each side of the pact may only be holding now in the covert belief that it will be their candidate that will be chosen to lead the Pact. This has occasionally surfaced from some of the mavericks in both political parties and in all such cases such individuals have pointed at their party president as the presidential candidate for the Pact in 2011.

“There will be definitely dissent from some members of the pact, especially from the side whose president will give way to the other. This dissent will have to be managed and it is suicidal for the pact to think that they can handle all these problems on the eve of the 2011 elections since that is when they seem to be destined to announce their candidate. More time will be spent on internal fire-fighting than campaigning.”
Mulafulafu stated that it further made sense for the electorate to know who this candidate was early enough so that the public gave the alliance feedback and for the candidate to be sold in areas, which were not his stronghold.

“There will also be a challenge of sharing constituencies and wards between the two parties, especially if rogue politicians who will, at the last minute, jump from the ruling party or other opposition parties will be tolerated. Most, if not all, will expect to be adopted as candidates in their current constituencies but as wolves in sheep skin in the pact formation. The ruling party will just be too happy to exploit all this possible last minute confusion to its advantage,” Mulafulafu said.

“It should sink in the heads of the leaders of the pact that 2011 is not necessarily a given for them. They must earn it by presenting to the electorate convincing messages and people with a track record of integrity. They should also demonstrate better organisation and seriousness. The sooner a debate is allowed on the choice of their candidate, the better.”

Labels: CARITAS, PF-UPND, SAM MULAFULAFU

posted by MrK @ 2:46 PM