Hakainde and political campaigns

By Daily Revelation Editor

The opposition in the country is rightly complaining of being stopped from having rallies while President Hakainde Hichilema has clearly launched an unannounced campaign through the tours he is conducting around the country.

Of course we have defended his right to travel to any place he wishes to travel to any time given the position he carries as Head of State. However, when one looks clearly into the activities he is conducting countrywide they border more on campaigning than launching or inspecting any developmental project. It cannot be discounted that presidents in this country have dishonestly conducted campaigns under the guise of inspecting development projects, and Hakainde is simply flowing along into that culture. The saddest part is that this is someone who promised to conduct matters differently.

Further to that, this is a head of state who promised Zambians that this country will be a beacon of democracy where political parties and others stakeholders will be allowed to freely mobilise as he had nothing to fear owing to how impeccable he was going to run national affairs, which he said would render ‘unfettered’ opposition gatherings worthless. Alas, Hakainde is presiding over a system that has ensured that all his major political opponents have been squeezed, almost literally banning them from holding rallies aside from the occasional gatherings during by-elections mostly in rural areas, some of which have had their own incidences.

We actually have no problem with Hakainde conducting the campaigns that he is currently carrying out around the country. But we have a problem with him campaigning while using police to tie his opponents’ hands behind their backs. We have stated before that this country does not belong to Hakainde alone, therefore if he is going to conduct campaigns and other mobilisations freely, his opponents too should have the freedom to conduct their own gatherings and mobilisations around the country.

In a country that is truly democratic, you can’t divorce free thought, and public mass gatherings and expression of thought through them, provided they are peaceful.

Inspector General of Police Graphael Musamba is now coming up with new spanners to make public gatherings more difficult for the opposition, having run out of all the excuses in the textbook in denying them and others their constitutionally given rights to assemble. He’s trampling on freedom of association by now telling Zambians that to hold a rally they will now have to prove to the police that they will not start a civil war. He has not provided the parameters under which the same applications should be made. He has become a law unto himself in terms of determining what constitutes anything that should amount to civil war or not, and that that is only peculiar to big groupings like the United Kwacha Alliance (UKA) for instance.

Graphael says on account of that alone he can never sanction a permit for them to hold any rally, despite the law clearly stating that the duty of those who want to conduct gatherings only goes as far as informing police within a specified timeframe of their intention to hold a rally, and then police going ahead to provide security for the same.

Graphael’s police always uses ‘security risk’ or ‘lack of manpower’ to deny opposition gatherings, but from nowhere and within a very short space of time numbers are found to quell the rallies when those who are brave have attempted to proceed regardless.

Hakainde promised that he would allow opposition parties’ unfettered mobilisation under his administration as his performance alone would render their gatherings worthless. We are wondering if he is now telling Zambians that he has failed to perform and as a result he is working round the clock to stop his opposition opponents and other Zambians from enjoying their freedoms of association.