Maravi

Why Rupiah cried

COMMENT - Also see: Rupiah resisted to leave power, reveals Magazine, Chibaula Silwamba.

Why Rupiah cried
By The Post
Thu 13 Oct. 2011, 14:00 CAT

We have noticed that some people have been misled into believing that Rupiah Banda willingly gave up the presidency because he was prepared to respect the wishes of the people and he is therefore a good democrat.

Rupiah did not respect our people when he was president. He made a classical mistake of over-confidence. He looked down upon our people so much that he believed that he could rule them for however long he wanted. Maybe this is the advice that he got from his deceased political mentor Frederick Chiluba. We say this because that was Chiluba's mindset as well. Although Chiluba claimed to have been the founding father of democracy, he did not believe in democracy.

And when Chiluba was engaged in a political struggle, he believed in using undemocratic methods that militated against the functioning of the very democracy that he claimed to have fathered. Chiluba is supposed to have told the late Dean Mung'omba that Zambians were so docile that he could rule for as long as he wanted. Chiluba believed this, hence his attempt at a third term.

But the Zambians that he believed to be docile showed him the way out of State House. In his reincarnation as special advisor to Rupiah, Chiluba shamelessly told the nation that he would use all kinds of tricks, including international ones, to ensure that his preferred candidate, Rupiah, won the election. In his bragging, Chiluba forgot that our lives are not ours but they are in the hands of God. That is all we are prepared to say about Chiluba for now.

When the campaigns came, we could all see some of the tricks that were being employed to ensure that Rupiah won regardless of what our people wanted. Clearly, Rupiah thought he could manipulate our people. This country has never seen the amount of election materials, or indeed bribes flowing in an election as was the case with the MMD campaign. They were prepared to subvert the will of the people by flooding them with gifts - wanted and unwanted.

In the last 90 days of Rupiah's presidency, his government degenerated into panic mode and started senseless road works which could not be finished in the time required in a bid to woo voters to his side. This did not work. Rupiah ran a corrupt government which accepted bribes and illicit commissions as normal. With this newly-acquired wealth, Rupiah believed that he could buy the electorate. It is this over-confidence that cost him dearly.

There is no doubt that his loss caught him by surprise. The many pundits that he had accumulated, including very respectable international think-tanks, told him he was winning the election, albeit by a narrow margin. How they decided that the narrow margin would swing in Rupiah's favour is not for us to say. But those predictions lulled Rupiah into a deep sleep of false comfort.

To him, as long as he was throwing money at the electorate and outspending the opposition, he had won the election. More cynically, Rupiah had begun to believe his own propaganda. They kept Michael Sata out of the state media and the only attention he ever got from them was probably the biggest propaganda and character assassination campaign seen in our country.

Rupiah and his minions were so impressed by the lies and defamation that they threw at Michael that they started to believe it. This was to be their undoing. As a result of this overconfidence, Rupiah who promised to pummel Michael in the election and leave him punch-drunk was himself punch-drunk after the polls. He did not believe what had hit him.

We are not, therefore, surprised with the information that is now emerging about the events that occurred in the period after Rupiah realised that he was losing the election. The article from Africa Confidential is very instructive. It helps to put Rupiah's character in proper prospective. It also helps us to understand what happened in the immediate aftermath of the election.

It also helps us to ask interesting what ifs. The biggest ‘what if' is what would have happened if we did not have parallel vote tabulation? We say this against the background that Rupiah and his minions had put up a very spirited fight against parallel vote tabulation. How did they finally agree to have parallel vote tabulation?

It seems we have the influence of the US government to thank for that. This is because it appears to us that the decisive event that made Rupiah reluctantly accept parallel vote tabulation was the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This brings us to the next big ‘what if'. What if Hillary had not visited Zambia?

It is clear that Rupiah only gave up power because he thought there was no alternative. If the election could have been rigged, it was going to be rigged. There was some rigging but clearly, it did not help them as much as they hoped. And as a result of that failure, today we sit with a new government in power.

Rupiah's overconfidence and his having reposed his confidence in money saved the country from a heartless tyrant who would have caused so much heartache in the country had he received a full five-year mandate. The picture that emerges from the information now available is that Rupiah did not intend to give up. But what is more worrying is that he was prepared to tamper with the election and rob the people of their victory.

We must be grateful to those patriots who, in their own way, stood up to stop this. But we must also be vigilant and work to unearth all the wrong things that may have happened in the last election and ensure that dirty tactics are never again used to undermine our democratic process. Rupiah's attempts bring us yet another cold and chilly ‘what if?' What if those who refused to help Rupiah subvert our democratic process did not refuse? Where would we be today?

There is a lesson in that courage to do the right thing is what it takes to serve a nation. For that reason, we salute every Zambian, and even foreigners who stood up to Rupiah and helped to save our democracy. Today, we can write as we do because there is peace in our country. And we thank God for this peace.

As for Rupiah, the wrongs that he did and the wrongs that he tried to do will haunt him until his dying day. Let this be a lesson to all those who wield power on behalf of our people that it is better to use it to serve one's people than to enjoy it for its own sake. Rupiah may not have wanted to give up power but he had no choice in the matter. He put his trust in money and tyranny.

And when it mattered most, these vices failed him. Rupiah was taught that money could buy you friends but not their affection. In the end, when Rupiah realised that his confidence had been misplaced, all he could do was cry because he discovered he had lied to himself and how painful that was.

Labels: 2011 ELECTIONS, CORRUPTION, DEMOCRACY, FREDERICK CHILUBA, HILLARY CLINTON, MARK STORELLA, MICHAEL SATA, RUPIAH BANDA, VOTERIGGING

posted by MrK @ 5:19 PM