Maravi

Confess your wrongs and seek forgiveness

Confess your wrongs and seek forgiveness
By The Post
Tue 27 Sep. 2011, 15:00 CAT

WE now face the challenge of coming to terms with the way Rupiah Banda governed the country, and organised and conducted the last elections. We need to deal with this in ways which will enable us to face the future as a united nation at peace with itself.

There is need for the Zambian people to know what the MMD did to try and rig last week's elections. There is need for our people to know where the huge sums of money Rupiah spent on these elections came from. We should be determined to know this to ensure that it is not repeated.

There are people calling for forgiveness; there are people talking against retribution. We all agree that forgiveness is always a good thing and retribution doesn't make sense. But there can be no meaningful forgiveness where there is no truth or confession of one's wrongs. We need to know what happened, what was done so that we are left less burdened by the past and unshackled to pursue a glorious future.

Those who did wrong things under Rupiah, including Rupiah himself, have the right to seek forgiveness. But one cannot seek forgiveness for wrongs they have not confessed. Confess your wrongs first and then seek forgiveness. But even when forgiveness comes, it does not mean people should forget the wrongs that were done. Whilst we should forgive, we should never forget.

We have no doubt that there was concerted effort on the part of Rupiah and his league to rig last week's elections. They attempted in every way possible to falsify the will of the people up to the last minute. They were ready to alter figures and give themselves victory. People were caught trying to do this.

It will not be difficult to successfully petition every parliamentary seat that the MMD has won. They engaged in electoral malpractices even in constituencies where their candidates were reasonably strong. It seems they had decided that come what may, they had to win through abuses and corruption. They had stopped to care about the provisions of our electoral laws. They had put themselves above the law. But what they forgot is the great lesson of our time, the lesson that no regime can survive if it acts above the heads of the ordinary citizens of the country. We should find out every wrong that they did in connection with last week's elections so that never again should we witness such elections in our country.

All MMD parliamentary candidates, both those who won and those who lost, should come up and tell the nation what they did wrong and who was behind it and why it was done. They should also tell us how much money they were given by Rupiah. And Rupiah should tell us where that money came from. In fact, all the automobiles and other equipment that the MMD bought for these elections should be confiscated until they can prove the legitimacy of the source of funds that were used to purchase them.

We also did carry a story in which opposition UPND was using government motor vehicles to transport their campaign materials from a house in Lusaka's Libala residential area. There are people who were behind this. We ask them to come out in the open and explain how this was possible.

All these things will need to be known so that we can draw lessons from them in order to make good decisions for the future.

It is important to deal with these issues because they threaten the peace and stability of our country. Many of the conflicts on our continent arise from unfair contests for power. We were on the brink of electoral violence last week. We don't want that to happen again because such conflicts threaten not only the gains we have made but also our collective future. And we should treat the question of free, fair and transparent elections and stability in our country as a common challenge. We also know that for as long as the majority of people feel they are not allowed to elect their own leaders in free and fair elections, there will always be tension and conflict.

There is of course the issue of the choice of the company that was awarded to print ballot papers for last week's elections. This company, Universal Print Group, was known to have been a subject of a corruption, bribery and money laundering investigations by the Anti-Corruption Commission, but those who were responsible for awarding the contract still went ahead and gave the contract to them. They knew very well that this was against the law which requires that no government contract should be given to anyone who is involved in such type of corruption. But they still went ahead. And they were even telling lies that there was no such investigations. Why? Why did the Anti-Corruption Commission lie about this investigation? The Electoral Commission of Zambia made it very clear that they would do nothing to reverse the contract even if evidence was provided to them that this company they had contracted was involved in corruption with their own officials. And this was two weeks before the printing of the ballot papers commenced. Why did the Electoral Commission of Zambia pretend not to know of Universal Print Group's corruption when they actually knew everything? All this needs to be known so that in future there is no repeat of this.

This is the only way we are going to build a better society, a more just, fair and humane nation. And we are saying all this in the understanding that the individual does best in a strong and decent community of people with principles and standards and common aims and values.

There was naked abuse of power and people need to be protected from such abuses in future. We can't protect the ordinary against abuse of power by leaving them to it; we must protect each other - this can only be done together. Leaders lead, but in the end, the people govern.

We should try to build a nation with pride in itself. A thriving nation, rich in economic prosperity, secure in social justice, confident in political change. A land in which our children can bring up their children with a future to look forward to. That should be our hope. Not just to promise change - but to achieve it.

And those calling for reconciliation should be very clear and honest about what they want to reconcile. Is it impunity or reconciliation they really want? We ask this question because reconciliation is to seek and ask forgiveness after one has confessed his or her wrongs. Reconciliation is the fruit of honesty, truth and solidarity. And in true reconciliation both sides of the issue should balance.

And strictly speaking, this call for reconciliation is nonsense. We say this because what needs to be reconciled is the books of public accounts from which Rupiah and his friends were stealing. This is what needs reconciliation. The rest can be taken care of by arrests and prosecutions. It is that which will produce true reconciliation by sending the guilty to jail and making them pay back what they have stolen.

Labels: MMD, RUPIAH BANDA

posted by MrK @ 6:46 PM