Directionless opposition

Directionless opposition
By The Post
Mon 11 June 2012, 13:25 CAT

POLITICAL parties have a very important role to play in the governance of our country. Their function is dead serious: to provide a peaceful and fair method by which our people can select their leaders and have a meaningful role in determining their own destiny.

Political parties recruit, nominate and campaign to elect public officials; draw up policy programmes for the government if they are in the majority; offer criticisms and alternative policies if they are in the opposition; mobilise support for common policies among different interest groups; educate the public about public issues; and provide structure and rules for the society's political debate.

It is for this reason that we need all our political parties to function in a more efficient, effective and orderly manner. It is also for this reason that the inefficiency, ineffectiveness and disorderliness of our opposition political parties is worrying.

It is increasingly becoming difficult to discern what some of our political parties and their leaders actually stand for. For instance, what can one say UPND and Hakainde Hichilema stand for?

What are they seeking in politics? One day they support this, the other day they are opposing the same issue they supported yesterday. They have been in a political alliance with almost everyone. In 2006, they were in an electoral alliance with UNIP and FDD.

After that, they tried to form an alliance with MMD but before it could be concluded, they moved on to form a pact with PF. When the pact with PF failed, they went back to MMD and went into last year's elections under a loose alliance with this party that was at that time in power.

They were determined to see to it that their former allies, the PF, did not win. They went into that election believing deeply that they themselves could not win. Hakainde made this position clear several times. He was on radio all the time saying neither UPND nor PF could defeat the MMD on their own.

That was Hakainde's key campaign message in last year's elections. But he still went ahead and contested the elections even at the presidential level. For what? Who did he think would vote for him, would waste his vote on him when even he himself was very sure that he could not win?

Today Hakainde is in an open alliance with MMD, the party whose leadership he used to say was corrupt. Today Hakainde is defending the same people, Rupiah Banda and his sons, who he used to say were very corrupt! It is for this reason that we are asking: what does UPND and Hakainde stand for?

And what do all these alliances UPND and Hakainde are always getting into but failing to fulfil mean? Theirs seems to be a party that cannot stand on its own. But when one deeply analyses these alliances UPND and Hakainde have been getting into, it is clear that there is nothing honest about them. They are simply a product of opportunism, illusions and evasions. And no true alliance has ever been built or can ever be built on the shifting sands of evasions, illusions and opportunism.

Today, Hakainde and UPND seem to be propelled by only one thing: anger and bitterness. But one cannot achieve much if the only thing that propels him is anger or bitterness. Something more constructive, something more positive, needs to fuel one's work if it is to be of value and sustainable.

People do not follow uncommitted leaders. And commitment can be displayed in a full range of matters, including the alliances one gets into. The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.

It is no wonder that since Hakainde took over the leadership of the UPND, the party's political fortunes have been declining. Hakainde has made the UPND increasingly becoming associated with the most disagreeable messages and thoughts. His leadership of the party is characterised by inconsistencies and contradictions. He is moving in circles; he is in a perpetual roundabout. He is a man who has no problems swallowing his vomit.

Today, Hakainde and UPND are in the forefront of defending corrupt judges. Why? For them, it is simply a question of political expedience. It is a question of trying to humiliate, politically and otherwise, Michael Sata. The issues at hand don't matter to them. And if they find them to matter, they don't hesitate to twist things, tell lies to suit their narrow agenda. This is not a recipe for building a strong and respectable opposition.

One can understand and probably sympathise with the predicament the MMD is in over these judges. These are their friends and they were together in these schemes that have today backfired. They can't just simply abandon them. They have to do everything possible to defend them because these men were simply fulfilling their own schemes.

We don't believe Hakainde and UPND were part of these schemes. But look at how senselessly they have jumped to try and take the leadership of all this! Anyway, this is true and in accord with their opportunistic behaviour and their insatiable desire for hegemony.

In everything they are involved in, they always want to assume the leading role, they want to be seen to be the leaders. Even if the MMD is almost twice bigger than UPND, they want to appear to be the leaders of this alliance.

This type of politics is not strengthening the opposition. It is actually weakening and decimating it. People are able to follow what is going on and it is every day becoming clearer as to who is making sense and who isn't. The position of UPND and Hakainde in many things is no longer making sense. Theirs is a lost cause. They are there but they don't know where they are going.

They talk big and posture a lot, pretending to be strong and confident. But big problems lie ahead for them. They don't know where they are headed, and that is dangerous. Hakainde's great achievement in opposition politics, in his leadership of UPND, is directionless leadership: he appears to be in control, but no one knows to where he is leading.

We all make mistakes. But few people have been consistently wrong on all the great issues that have faced our nation since 2006, as Hakainde has been. UPND and Hakainde can no longer clearly define the purpose of their being in opposition politics. We perceive no ideological roots for their problems.

We can detect no sense of direction. They have a strong sense that they cannot win an election on their own. The only thing that seems to be guiding their politics is the wish to undermine Michael and his government. But this cannot, in any way, be a recipe for strengthening an opposition political party. Much more is needed for UPND and Hakainde to improve their electability.

The alliances they get into are for simply trying to win power. That desire, that will to win power is the one idea that pushes them into all these opportunistic alliances. But with the passage of time, that has always proved insubstantial glue.

Even in these alliances they are in today with the MMD, it's just a matter of time before their opportunistic characters become clear for all to see and reject. The signs of division may today be no bigger than a small crab in a jar, but they will grow.

What Zambia needs is a mature, serious, wise and courageous opposition that will give our people a feeling of security and great confidence in the future. A poor opposition threatens our multi-party political dispensation.

We don't want to go back to any form of one party state, de jure or de facto. We know very well that a single party state is a recipe for tyranny, is a disaster. And for this reason, we encourage efficient, effective and orderly opposition; we encourage a loyal opposition.

It is the absence of this type of opposition that is starting to make some of our people uncomfortable. They may disagree with the observations made by Bishop Mwata Chikumbi of the Jehovah's Kingdom Ministries that opposition political parties want to cause anarchy in the country.

They can disagree with this observation, but let it serve to them as a warning that all is not well in their approach to politics and some people are starting to be uncomfortable with them. They are increasingly starting to be seen to be anarchists, destructive elements.

They are increasingly losing public respect and support. Prudence will require them to review their political strategies and tactics or become irrelevant.