Dialogue must be entered into with the right spirit

 By Daily Revelation Editor

Giving his closing remarks following a meeting with the OASIS Forum last Friday, President Hakainde Hichilema announced that he would on Monday (today) hold another meeting with pro-constitutional amendment stakeholders at State House.

The President said this was needed in order to find consensus on the way forward on the matter.

At the start of the meeting from last Friday, OASIS Forum chairperson Beauty Katebe had boldly told Hichilema that the Bill 7 amendment which contained contentious clauses and was already on the floor must be withdrawn from Parliament, so that a new holistic undertaking with proper legal safeguards could be undertaken.

Katebe was saddened that instead of meeting Hichilema to celebrate the delivery of his promises, they were meeting him over a contentious arrangement, saying they would have anticipated him to operate differently on the matter, especially that he was in the dungeons with them when such lopsided arrangements were being attempted by previous administrations.

First of all, the very act that the President took time to meet the other stakeholders who are opposed to the manner he is going about handling constitutional matters should be noted as a move in the positive direction. But his approach will only become commendable if he is using the lessons from this dialogue process with an open mind of wanting to learn and accommodate the views of others, as opposed to using the same as a mere public relations stunt to indicate that he was interested in dialogue while pushing through with his wishes.

And given that the President and his administration are already pro these constitutional amendments, we would have hoped that he would expend more time in engaging those who disagree with him as opposed to those who agree with him, since they will simply be speaking in the same echo chamber when they meet. Probably the only thing his meeting with those who agree with him today will achieve is to play the public relations narrative in terms of showing which stakeholders agree with him over the matter. Otherwise, we doubt if there will be any dialogue between two interested parties flowing in the same direction, besides finding effective ways of how they will proceed on this matter.

It’s clear to all who have reason the motivation behind Hichilema’s last minute moves to foist this constitution through people’s throats. Chief among the many interests is the politics as the nation heads into the 2026 general elections. Hichilema has not hidden the fact that he has been informed that he would likely win the elections, but most of his members of parliament would lose. Therefore, he wants to use the delimitation exercise to increase constituencies, especially in his solid strongholds in order to counter whatever losses he and his party, the UPND, will suffer at parliamentary level.

And his appeal to regionalism was deliberate and indicative of what he intended to do and the justification for the delimitation, when he argued that he was being opposed over the constitution because of the region he hailed from, and because some of the delimitations that had been carried out in the past allegedly favoured certain regions. We really wonder why a president of the Republic should be so focussed on regionalism as if he was elected president only from some regions.

Dialogue should mean dialogue, and should not be used as cover to achieve the narrow self-serving political interests of any individual.