What connects Rupiah, Kayukwa, Neo and UPG?

What connects Rupiah, Kayukwa, Neo and UPG?
By The Post
Tue 13 Sep. 2011, 14:00 CAT

IT is very difficult to sustain things using lies. It is said that lies have very short legs. In fact, it is more accurate to say that lies have no legs at all. This is what explains why liars have to keep telling lies. This is why one lie always leads to another.

When we reported that the Anti Corruption Commission knew something important about Universal Print Group that they were not telling the public, all sorts of things were said. Given Lubinda, who raised the initial alarm, was lambasted and his political party, the Patriotic Front, was accused of bringing up unimportant issues simply because they were not ready for the election.

The fact that the allegations of corruption, bribery and money laundering that Lubinda was raising were very important did not seem to deter the Electoral Commission of Zambia and even the Anti Corruption Commission from dismissing his concerns about dealing with a company that has a known involvement in acts of corruption, bribery and money laundering.

What is more serious is the fact that the Anti Corruption Commission's Godfrey Kayukwa went further and told blatant and manifest lies. In the face of a clear challenge that Universal Print Group, the company the Electoral Commission of Zambia had contracted to print ballot papers for next week's elections, was a corrupt company that should not have been engaged, Kayukwa issued a press release on August 11, 2011 in which he said there was no investigation concerning the Electoral Commission of Zambia or any of its suppliers.

But as can be seen from the documents that we published yesterday, this same Anti Corruption Commission had, only some 16 weeks before, recorded a warn and caution statement from a former director of Information Technology at the Electoral Commission of Zambia, Mfula Mpundu, in which they informed him that the Commission was conducting investigations into an allegation that he was bribed by the Universal Print Group to the tune of US $90,000 in relation to Electoral Commission of Zambia contract work.

The obvious question that arises is: why did Kayukwa decide to tell such a lie? Who was he protecting? And for what? We say this because it does not make sense for the head of the Anti Corruption Commission to tell such a lie.

Was Kayukwa acting alone or is he under instruction from his usual puppeteers? We do not expect Kayukwa to tell such a lie without having cleared himself with his political masters. We were, therefore, not surprised that it did not take long for Rupiah Banda to dive into the fray in defence of Universal Print Group. On at least two separate occasions, Rupiah was heard vehemently defending Universal Print Group, claiming that they are credible.

Is it possible that Rupiah did not know that Universal Print Group had been paying bribes to Electoral Commission of Zambia officials and had also engaged in money laundering? There is no doubt that Rupiah knew that Universal Print Group are a bunch of corrupt and scheming criminal types that should not be trusted by anyone. Could that be the reason why he was defending them? We say this knowing very well that Rupiah has no shame in defending criminality. This is one of the outstanding features of his presidency.

This is the man who does not feel any shame in publicly defending criminality. It is clear that the criminal inclinations of Universal Print Group are a quality that has endeared them to Rupiah. This is why the whole government machinery and their constellation of vuvuzelas jumped at the opportunity to defend Universal Print Group.

What is it that Universal Print Group is able to do for Rupiah that has made it necessary for him to personally defend them? Why is it so important for the entire Anti Corruption Commission to lie about an investigation against Universal Print Group?

Why was the Electoral Commission of Zambia so defensive and abusive in their response to Lubinda when he raised a question of Universal Print Group's corruption? Further still, why was the Electoral Commission Zambia determined to push ahead with Universal Print Group even if it was demonstrated to them that the company was corrupt and, therefore, not entitled to carry out any public contracts in terms of our law? These are legitimate questions that deserve an honest answer.

We have no doubt that Universal Print Group and the MMD have a relationship that could include vote tampering through the supply of duplicate ballot papers bearing the same serial numbers as those which have been officially supplied for the elections to give the MMD an opportunity to interfere with the will of the people should the election be seen to be going against them.

We have not forgotten that in 2008, some 600,000 ballot papers mysteriously arrived at Lusaka International Airport which Electoral Commission of Zambia claimed not to have ordered. Then who did and who paid for them? It is very clear that the MMD has realised that this election is an impossibility for them. They know that the opposition, particularly the Patriotic Front, have been making serious progress and inroads into what were their previous strongholds, making the possibility of MMD winning this election very difficult.

This is what explains the attempts at conditioning minds by the production of so many opinion polls, some of which are so transparent in their attempt to mislead our people. These opinion polls are necessary because the MMD would like to justify their attempts at rigging.

Last week, discredited academician Neo Simutanyi sent this newspaper his opinion poll in which he made a number of astounding claims which were contradicted by his own statistics and demographic logic. It is clear that Simutanyi was trying to do the MMD a favour by telling them that they are winning.

And it would appear that he needed statistics to back him up. One of the things that Simutanyi said was that MMD is going to win because it has consolidated itself in its strongholds. What he omitted to tell our people was the base from which he began in order to make the claim that MMD had consolidated itself in its strongholds.

Even a first-year statistics student could have done a better job than Simutanyi. In the Eastern Province, Simutanyi said that his poll predicted that Rupiah was going to get 51 per cent of the vote. What he did not tell the public is the fact that in 2008, Rupiah got 75 per cent of the vote in the Eastern Province. By his own numbers, Simutanyi was saying that Rupiah had lost 24 percentage points between 2008 and now.

How can that be consolidation? Simutanyi lied and is attempting to mislead the public. In the Western Province, Simutanyi stated that his poll showed that MMD would get 41 per cent. In 2008, Rupiah garnered 72 per cent of the vote in Western Province. This means that Rupiah was losing 31 percentage points in Western Province. Again, Simutanyi calls this consolidation.

What nonsense is this? When you compare Simutanyi's so-called poll with the results of 2008, MMD also loses eight percentage points in North Western Province and seven percentage points on the Copperbelt.

By Simutanyi's own poll, MMD does not gain in any of its strongholds. Why is Simutanyi telling lies? Simutanyi then goes into what we might call demographic nonsense because he claims that the Patriotic Front loses percentage points in all its strongholds but gains in all the provinces where it was previously very weak. Simutanyi wants us to believe that the Patriotic Front loses popularity in Lusaka, Copperbelt, Northern and Luapula, but gains huge points in North Western, Southern, Eastern and Central provinces. What is the point of all this nonsense? Why are we discussing it?

It is clear that these so-called polls are designed to condition the minds of our people to accept electoral fraud. The same question can be raised about Kayukwa's lies about Universal Print Group. Why is he lying? It is not far-fetched to say that his bosses have a vested interest in Universal Print Group. They know that if the corruption of Universal Print Group were exposed, then it might become very difficult for them to carry out their schemes.

The same question can be asked about why Rupiah defended Universal Print Group. He needs them. But let Rupiah and those that are cheating him know that they can cheat some of our people sometimes but they cannot cheat all our people all the time.

It is said that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat the mistakes of history. Rupiah should learn from Laurent Gbagbo.